Shakespeare's Tragic SkepticismYale University Press, 2008 M10 1 - 304 páginas Readers of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies have long noted the absence of readily explainable motivations for some of Shakespeare’s greatest characters: why does Hamlet delay his revenge for so long? Why does King Lear choose to renounce his power? Why is Othello so vulnerable to Iago’s malice? But while many critics have chosen to overlook these omissions or explain them away, Millicent Bell demonstrates that they are essential elements of Shakespeare’s philosophy of doubt. Examining the major tragedies, Millicent Bell reveals the persistent strain of philosophical skepticism. Like his contemporary, Montaigne, Shakespeare repeatedly calls attention to the essential unknowability of our world. In a period of social, political, and religious upheaval, uncertainty hovered over matters great and small—the succession of the crown, the death of loved ones from plague, the failure of a harvest. Tumultuous social conditions raised ultimate questions for Shakespeare, Bell argues, and ultimately provoked in him a skepticism which casts shadows of existential doubt over his greatest masterpieces. |
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... relation to his sources often itself illustrated the problem as it was duplicated for the playwright in the creation of his plays. My perception that this relation was often an ironic one had been strengthened when I read Howard ...
... relation to his sources often itself illustrated the problem as it was duplicated for the playwright in the creation of his plays. My perception that this relation was often an ironic one had been strengthened when I read Howard ...
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... relations, can be glimpsed in each play. One cannot write about Shakespeare's great tragedies without taking account of the presence of such immediate historic realities as threats against the crown, the appearance of a new class of ...
... relations, can be glimpsed in each play. One cannot write about Shakespeare's great tragedies without taking account of the presence of such immediate historic realities as threats against the crown, the appearance of a new class of ...
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... relation that makes rational sense of human experience—this, too, may not have seemed self-evident to Shakespeare either. His greatest plays seem to rely upon the commonsense logic that connects what happens with causes in circumstances ...
... relation that makes rational sense of human experience—this, too, may not have seemed self-evident to Shakespeare either. His greatest plays seem to rely upon the commonsense logic that connects what happens with causes in circumstances ...
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... relation of contemporaryeconomic and social turmoil to skepticism about personal definitionis salient in KingLear. Othello may be said to take place in a Venice contemporary with the real London in which social identities might collapse ...
... relation of contemporaryeconomic and social turmoil to skepticism about personal definitionis salient in KingLear. Othello may be said to take place in a Venice contemporary with the real London in which social identities might collapse ...
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... relation to the circumstances of a new age of social mobility. The anxiety produced bythe tensions of Elizabethan-Jacobeanpowerstruggles hassome- thing to dowith Macbeth's lostconfidence intheprogressofevents as a comprehensible ...
... relation to the circumstances of a new age of social mobility. The anxiety produced bythe tensions of Elizabethan-Jacobeanpowerstruggles hassome- thing to dowith Macbeth's lostconfidence intheprogressofevents as a comprehensible ...
Contenido
2 Othellos Jealousy | |
3 Unaccommodated Lear | |
4 Macbeths Deeds | |
The Roman Frame | |
Selected Bibliography | |
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