Shakespeare and Complexity Theory

Claire Hansen is a researcher on the Shakespeare Reloaded Project at the University of Sydney.

Shakespeare and Complexity Theory is a mind-expanding and discipline-shattering text. It is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding complexity theory and its relevance to literary studies. The book illuminates the ‘Shakespeare’ phenomenon as a complex array of interlocking systems reaching from authorship to collaboration, storytelling to theatrical practice, dance to pedagogy, and natural to cultural environments. Exciting new readings of canonical plays are enabled by leveraging complexivist principles such as bounded instability, self-organisation, emergence and attractors.--Professor Liam E. Semler, University of Sydney"Shakespeare and Complexity Theory displays a kind of breathtaking intellectual energy here that carries all before it." – Evelyn Tribble, Donald Collie Chair, University of Otago

• CONTENTSList of FiguresIntroduction: Shakespeare, the System 1: The Characteristics of Complexity 2: ‘Like a tangled chain; nothing impaired, but all disordered’: Dance and bounded instability in A Midsummer Night’s Dream3: ‘Hath the firmament more suns than one?’ Co-authorship, space and self-organisation in Titus Andronicus 4: ‘Such Branches of Learning’: The Unexpected in Shakespeare Pedagogy and The Merchant of Venice5: ‘Constant as the Northern Star’? The Power of Attractors in Stratford-upon-Avon and Julius CaesarConclusionReferences Index