Re-Humanising Shakespeare: Literary Humanism, Wisdom and Modernity
Re-Humanising Shakespeare: Literary Humanism, Wisdom and Modernity
Can Shakespeare help us with the question of how to live?
Re-Humanising Shakespeare argues that although Shakespeare strikingly dramatizes various kinds of uncertainty and scepticism, including scepticism about what it is to be human, his work can still serve as a rich source of existential wisdom and guidance. Revised throughout, this edition includes: a new introduction which focuses more attention on what is specific to literature's treatment of the human (as epitomised by Shakespeare); a section drawing on new work on literary and dramatic genres as different ways of attending to human life; a revised chapter on the history plays; and a reading of King Lear.
Blending theory and critical resources with close analysis of the plays, this book makes provocative reading for all those interested in Shakespeare, ethics, human being and questions of literary value.
Key Features
- Revised throughout and includes a new section on genre, as well as discussion of King Lear
- Offers new ways of understanding literature's distinctive treatment of the human
- Shows through detailed readings of the plays how Shakespeare both unsettles and reclaims ideas about being human
- Provides a clear account of modernity which illuminates the relationship between critical theory, scepticism and literary humanism
- Includes close readings of a number of plays including Hamlet, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, The Winter's Tale, Coriolanus and Macbeth
Author: Andrew Mousley
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: 03/03/2015
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.81lbs
Size: 9.09h x 6.71w x 0.49d
ISBN: 9780748691234
About the Author
Andrew Mousley is Senior Lecturer in English at De Montfort University, Leicester. He is the author of Critical Humanisms (2003, with Martin Halliwell), Renaissance Drama and Contemporary Literary Theory (2000) and the editor of New Casebooks: John Donne (1999). He is the co-editor of the Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature series.