Theory, Philosophy, and Shakespeare Studies - Graduate Seminar

SEDERI Yearbook 32, 2022

A handbook is a compilation of established knowledge on a given topic. De iure, none of the essays contained in a handbook need to provide new research output; de facto, we have expectations for a handbook on Shakespearean criticism (setting aside our professional need to be served with an impeccable state of the art). Regarding state of the art, this volume passes the test with flying colors. But a challenge to be faced by a handbook's editor is to decide on the vantage point from which the abovementioned established knowledge should be organized. In "Introduction: Twenty-First Century Shakespeares" (1-18), Evelyn Gajowski alludes to a wellknown nostalgia for the Shakespeare that, she suggests, resembles that teddy bear from our childhood-a memento from a fixed, stable and comfortable past. A number of studies have, of course, challenged the interest of this fixed, comfy, and foundational Shakespeare. Rather than reformulating this challenge to traditional perspectives (whether in private rooms or classrooms), the volume reminds us that, at least in academia, traditional approaches to Shakespeare were never meant to be traditional. Disciplines such as New Criticism, Formalism, and Character Analysis once constituted vigorous and fresh perspectives. Crucially, I find that the volume shows that, after all, these are still vigorous and fresh perspectives and that new ones would not have come to the academic arena if not preceded by them. The essays show that "Foundational studies," "Challenges to traditional liberal humanism," "Matters of difference," "Millennial directions," and "Twenty-First Century directions"-the sections into which the book is divided-are applicable, fertile, productive, and, importantly, mutually enriching. One of the book's strengths is its structure: a stage-by-stage explanation of the succession of approaches to Shakespeare which

Renaissance Quarterly

also models how particular poetic forms (e.g., the quatrain or the couplet) furnished mechanisms for argumentation and thinking. In advocating for critical accounts that consider how "representations shift in meaning over time" (135), Harrison's essay supports Griffin's suggestion that the "early modern history play" merits consideration as a distinctive generic category. By attending to Henry V 's habit of announcing its approaches to history, Griffin complicates contemporary purchase on any past to demonstrate drama's role in forcing us to rethink the "intelligibility" of the past, whether recent or remote. Munro resituates Beaumont's play-including original and recent stagings-by showing how its most obtrusive characters are also its most modish cultural critics, fluent in conventions culled variously from theater's "current output" (145) to popular romance's "familiar poetic archaisms" (147). Lara Dodds's essay on Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam works to craft terminology out of a reading of the play's "complex temporal effects" (194). Her careful parsing of discrete kinds of temporalities available in different story lines within the play supports an account of counterfactuals that showcases how imagined, invented, and competing temporalities supply resources for communicating affective response. Her compelling argument surpasses her taxonomy (the splicing of "narrative" and "passionate" counterfactuals), but the explicit conceptual framing provides a useful guide, sometimes elusive in other contributions to the volume. Still, this intriguing collection of essays works both to begin and to extend a valuable conversation, and indeed offers provocative sketches toward "analytic models for future investigations of permutations unplumbed" (6).

Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Difference, 2018

International Journal of English Studies

In the last few years there has been an increased interest within the field of Shakespeare studies in criticism. The 400 th anniversary of Shakespeare's death was celebrated with the publication of Shakespeare in Our Time. A Shakespeare Association of America Collection (Callaghan & Gossett, 2016). This varied collection of essays, mostly written by former SAA presidents, examines key concerns and new critical approaches in the ever-growing field of Shakespeare studies. More recently, The Arden Shakespeare released The Arden Research Handbook of Contemporary Shakespeare Criticism (Gajowski, 2020), twenty chapters that provide a general overview of the most influential theoretical trends in Shakespearean criticism from the mid-twentieth century until the present. Unlike the aforementioned studies in Critical Approaches to Shakespeare (1623-2000). Shakespeare for All Time (2022) Marta Cerezo Moreno does not offer a general overview, but instead an in-depth analysis of the main critical currents that dominated Shakespeare studies during the last four centuries. To acquire a better understanding of Shakespeare in our time, one ought to look first at the historical schools of thought that have strongly influenced and, also, served as the basis for contemporary Shakespeare criticism. This is precisely the reason why Critical Approaches to Shakespeare (1623-2000). Shakespeare for All Time constitutes a valuable contribution to

Renaissance Quarterly, 2020

framework. Singh uses a postcolonial lens to focus on South African capital and class struggles via King Lear, racial (sometimes racist) and sexual depictions of Cleopatra through a recent Royal Shakespeare Company production of Antony and Cleopatra, and the establishment of English nationhood in Cymbeline. Part 3, "Shakespeare, Postcoloniality, and Reception: Performance and Film," moves to foreground more recent, global appropriations. Employing specific examples to forge a larger point, the first chapter in this section analyzes the discourse and reception surrounding specific intercultural, intertextual, non-Western productions: Ong Keng Sen's King Lear, Salim Ghouse's Jatra-style Hamlet, and Sulayman Al-Bassam's Richard III. One of the book's aims is to collapse the colonial-postcolonial binary, and Singh tackles this more directly in chapter 6, exploring the concept of contemporary Britishness in a multilingual, multiracial, and multiethnic Britain. Chapter 7 explores Shakespeare on film, particularly stressing Shakespeare within the context of world cinema. This text provides richly detailed, in-depth analysis of specific productions and the key critical influences of seminal scholarly works; however, its true contribution lies in situating the playtexts, critical responses, and reviews of productions and appropriations within the ongoing-and always evolving-conversations regarding race, religion, ethnicity, nationhood, and gender. Singh's dual observations that Shakespeare's early modern audiences themselves lived in a multiracial and multiethnic global city, and that readers and audiences of Shakespeare continue to become "more transnational, transcultural, as well as multilingual," resonates throughout this highly engaging book.

International Journal of English Studies, 2023

In the last few years there has been an increased interest within the field of Shakespeare studies in criticism. The 400 th anniversary of Shakespeare's death was celebrated with the publication of Shakespeare in Our Time. A Shakespeare Association of America Collection (Callaghan & Gossett, 2016). This varied collection of essays, mostly written by former SAA presidents, examines key concerns and new critical approaches in the ever-growing field of Shakespeare studies. More recently, The Arden Shakespeare released The Arden Research Handbook of Contemporary Shakespeare Criticism (Gajowski, 2020), twenty chapters that provide a general overview of the most influential theoretical trends in Shakespearean criticism from the mid-twentieth century until the present. Unlike the aforementioned studies in Critical Approaches to Shakespeare (1623-2000). Shakespeare for All Time (2022) Marta Cerezo Moreno does not offer a general overview, but instead an in-depth analysis of the main critical currents that dominated Shakespeare studies during the last four centuries. To acquire a better understanding of Shakespeare in our time, one ought to look first at the historical schools of thought that have strongly influenced and, also, served as the basis for contemporary Shakespeare criticism. This is precisely the reason why Critical Approaches to Shakespeare (1623-2000). Shakespeare for All Time constitutes a valuable contribution to

College Literature, 2004

This extended piece will examine the treatment of race by Shakespeare through analysis of three different characters. Aaron from Titus Andronicus and the eponymous Othello are both moors, and the character of Shylock from The Merchant of Venice is Jewish. Aaron is the primary antagonist of Titus Andronicus and Shakespeare’s earliest Moor whereas Othello, created over a decade later, can be seen to echo the anti-hero of classical tragedy. Both characters in some way subvert racial stereotypes, from Aaron’s rejection of white superiority to the honourable nature of Othello. The question of race is complicated further in Othello through Shakespeare’s creation of the villain Iago, the play’s whiteequivalent of Aaron. Much like Othello and Aaron, Shylock conforms to Jewish stereotypes, including his seemingly overwhelming desire for riches and wealth regardless of the moral cost. However, he does much to challenge such expectations. The rationale for his actions promotes sympathy for the character, and highlights the double standards present in the Elizabethan period. This paper will also consider the chronology of Shakespeare’s plays and the social conventions of the time regarding race, with the intention of discerning how the playwright’s own racial prejudices, if any, evolved during his career.

Theatre Survey, 2004

This article tends to study the subversive Shakespeare's religious discourse in the Renaissance England. An adaptive multi-disciplinary dimension of Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA) is applied to lay bare the discursive strategies appropriated by William Shakespeare to safely express his political and religious philosophy in the last scene of the play of Hamlet. This study attempts to bring together linguistic, sociocognitive, and critical metaphorical aspects in one single CDA framework. Serving methods and tools of analysis from various well-known CDA approaches such as Fairclough (

2017