UID:
edocfu_9958353123502883
Format:
1 online resource
ISBN:
9781442679689
Content:
Original in topic and approach, Searching Shakespeare presents a political-historical exploration of Shakespeare's drama, examining the plays in the context of current ideological concerns ? history, memory, marginality, and nationalism. Derek Cohen predicates his argument on the supposition that the individual, as much as the encompassing state, is subject to the shaping forces and machinery of the ideological surround.Shakespeare's plays, Cohen argues, consistently portray the clash between the passionate search for individuality and the quest for social harmony as irresolvable. The playwright's uncanny ability to carry the reader to the edge of imaginary experience ? far from the literal world that is made visible by the text ? offers an entry into the subtextual and ironic underside of the dramas. It is in this dark and strange world of slavery, mutilation, sexual jealousy, and suborned murder that the implicit political biases of the plays are most evident and it is here, too, that a modern political analysis reveals why Shakespeare portrayed the quest for individuation and self-expression as necessarily ending in tragedy.
Note:
Frontmatter --
,
Contents --
,
Acknowledgments --
,
Introduction --
,
PART I --
,
CHAPTER ONE. Tragedy and the Nation: Othello --
,
CHAPTER TWO. History and the Nation: The Second Tetralogy --
,
CHAPTER THREE. Slave Voices: Caliban and Ariel --
,
CHAPTER FOUR. The Scapegoat Mechanism: Shylock and Caliban --
,
PART II --
,
CHAPTER FIVE. The Self-Representations of Othello --
,
CHAPTER SIX. King Lear and Memory --
,
CHAPTER SEVEN. The Past of Macbeth --
,
PART III --
,
CHAPTER EIGHT. Messengers of Death: The Figure of the Hit Man --
,
CHAPTER NINE. 'Noseless, handless, hack'd and chipp'd':1 Broken Human Bodies --
,
Notes --
,
Works Cited --
,
Index
Language:
English
DOI:
10.3138/9781442679689
URL:
https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442679689
Bookmarklink
