Stanley Cavell's American Dream: Shakespeare, Philosophy, and Hollywood Movies

This book explores Cavell's writings along converging lines of thought rather than in isolated categories. The author claims that, after Cavell's celebrated reading of King Lear turned into a nightmarish meditation on Vietnam, he found a more audible voice. Noting that Cavell's keen ear for the expressive power of ordinary language makes him both a first-rate literary artist and a compelling philosopher of the everyday, he catches what holds Cavell's manifold interests together. Here the poetry of ideas and presence of mind that animate Cavell's writing receive readings attuned to the spirit of their composition and its enlivening powers.

Author: Lawrence F. Rhu
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 05/15/2006
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.13lbs
Size: 9.22h x 6.38w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780823225965

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 11/01/2006 pg. 4
Univ PR Books for Public Libry 01/01/2007 pg. 1 - Recommended/Special Interest

About the Author

Lawrence F. Rhu is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of The Genesis of Tasso's Narrative Theory: English Translations of the Early Poetics and a Comparative Study of Their Significance.

Stanley Cavell is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Harvard University. His recent publications include A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises; Philosophical Passages: Wittgenstein, Emerson, Austin, and Derrida; Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life and Emerson's Transcendental Etudes.