Hugh Grady - Böcker

Shakespeare was neither a Royalist defender of order and hierarchy nor a consistently radical champion of social equality, but rather simultaneously radical and conservative as a critic of emerging forms of modernity. Hugh Grady argues that Shakespeare's social criticism in fact often parallels that of critics of modernity from our own Postmodernist era, that the broad analysis of modernity produced by Marx, Horkheimer and Adorno, Foucault, and others can serve as a productive enabling representation and critique of the emerging modernity represented by the image in Troilus and Cressida of `an universal wolf' of appetite, power, and will. The readings of Troilus and Cressida, Othello, King Lear, and As You Like It in Shakespeare's Universal Wolf demonstrate Shakespeare's keen interest in what twentieth-century theory has called `reification' - a term which designates social systems created by human societies but which confronts those societies as operating beyond human control, according to an autonomous `systems' logic - in nascent mercantile capitalism, in power-oriented Machiavellian politics, and in the scientistic, value-free rationality which Horkheimer and Adorno call `instrumental reason'.

This is a major study of the history of Shakespeare criticism in the modern era.Every epoch recreates its classic icons - and for literary culture none is more central nor more protean than Shakespeare. Even though finding the authentic Shakespeare has been a goal of scholarship since the eighteenth century, he has always been constructed as a contemporary author. Hugh Grady charts the construction of Shakespeare as a twentieth-century Modernist text by redirecting 'new historicist' methods to an investigation of the social roots of contemporary Shakespeare crticism itself. Beginning with the formation of professionalism as an ideology in the Victorian age, this much praised study describes the widespread attempts to save the values of the culturalist tradition, in reformulated 'Modernist' guise, from the threat of professionalist positivism in modernized universites. The tension between professionalism and culturalism gave rise to the Modernist Shakespeare of G. Wilson Knight, E. M. W. Tillyard, and American and British New Critics, and still conditions the postmodernist Shakespearean criticism of contemporary feminists, deconstrcutros, and 'new historicists'.From reviews of the hardback:'I enjoyed every word of The Modernist Shakespeare . . . The arguments it provokes are important ones, and it compels a rethinking of many critical assumptions in broader fields than just Shakespearian criticism.' Notes and Queries'a fluently meticulous history that comprehensively succeeds in justifying the three working assumptions Grady identifies . . . carefully nuanced, and theoretically incisive' Review of English Studies

From 1595-1600 Shakespeare dissected the workings of political power in the four histories of the Henriad and in Hamlet in ways which were remarkably parallel - and were perhaps influenced by - the ideas of the father of modern political analysis, Niccolò Machiavelli. However, the very same plays simultaneously explored the dynamics of self- and identity-formation under new conditions of secular modernity, in the process producing such memorable characters as Richard II, Prince Hal, Falstaff, and Hamlet. Hugh Grady argues that in analyzing modern subjectivity, Shakespeare re-produced not the ideas of Machiavelli, but those of Michel de Montaigne, that Renaissance definer of shifting identities and subjectivities and of complexly formed, sceptical knowledge. In so doing, Shakespeare in effect contributes to the theoretical debates over power and subjectivity in literary and cultural studies at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

This in-depth collection of essays traces the changing reception of Shakespeare over the past four hundred years, during which time Shakespeare has variously been seen as the last great exponent of pre-modern Western culture, a crucial inaugurator of modernity, and a prophet of postmodernity. This fresh look at Shakespeare's plays is an important contribution to the revival of the idea of 'modernity' and how we periodise ourselves, and Shakespeare, at the beginning of a new millennium.

This in-depth collection of essays traces the changing reception of Shakespeare over the past four hundred years, during which time Shakespeare has variously been seen as the last great exponent of pre-modern Western culture, a crucial inaugurator of modernity, and a prophet of postmodernity. This fresh look at Shakespeare's plays is an important contribution to the revival of the idea of 'modernity' and how we periodise ourselves, and Shakespeare, at the beginning of a new millennium.

Presentist Shakespeares is the first extended study of the principles and practice of 'presentism', a critical movement that takes account of the never-ending dialogue between past and present.In this bold and consistently thought-provoking collection of presentist readings, the contributors:argue that the ironies generated by our involvement in time are a fruitful, necessary and an unavoidable aspect of any text's being, and that presentism allows us to engage with them more fully and productivelydemonstrate how these ironies can function as agents of change, flowing unstoppably back into the events of the past, colouring how we perceive them and modifying our sense of what they signifyshow that a critic's inability to step beyond time and specifically the present does not, as has been argued elsewhere, 'contaminate' readings of Shakespeare's plays, but rather points to shades of implication suddenly available here and now within the wide range of plays examinedsuggest that presentism might not merely challenge or expand our sense of what Shakespeare's plays are able to tell us, but may in fact offer the only effective purchase on these texts that is available to us. Presentist criticism is an open-ended and on-going project, located at a particularly interesting and demanding juncture in modern Shakespeare studies. At this crucial point, then, Presentist Shakespeares is a compelling collection of readings by a distinguished team of authors, but it is also much more: it is a landmark, which reflects, develops and even rejoices in the intedeterminacy of the field.Contributors include: Catherine Belsey, Michael Bristol, Linda Charnes, John Drakakis, Ewan Fernie, Evelyn Gajowski, Hugh Grady, Terence Hawkes and Kiernan Ryan.

Presentist Shakespeares is the first extended study of the principles and practice of 'presentism', a critical movement that takes account of the never-ending dialogue between past and present.In this bold and consistently thought-provoking collection of presentist readings, the contributors:argue that the ironies generated by our involvement in time are a fruitful, necessary and an unavoidable aspect of any text's being, and that presentism allows us to engage with them more fully and productivelydemonstrate how these ironies can function as agents of change, flowing unstoppably back into the events of the past, colouring how we perceive them and modifying our sense of what they signifyshow that a critic's inability to step beyond time and specifically the present does not, as has been argued elsewhere, 'contaminate' readings of Shakespeare's plays, but rather points to shades of implication suddenly available here and now within the wide range of plays examinedsuggest that presentism might not merely challenge or expand our sense of what Shakespeare's plays are able to tell us, but may in fact offer the only effective purchase on these texts that is available to us. Presentist criticism is an open-ended and on-going project, located at a particularly interesting and demanding juncture in modern Shakespeare studies. At this crucial point, then, Presentist Shakespeares is a compelling collection of readings by a distinguished team of authors, but it is also much more: it is a landmark, which reflects, develops and even rejoices in the intedeterminacy of the field.Contributors include: Catherine Belsey, Michael Bristol, Linda Charnes, John Drakakis, Ewan Fernie, Evelyn Gajowski, Hugh Grady, Terence Hawkes and Kiernan Ryan.

Shakespeare and Impure Aesthetics explores ideas about art implicit in Shakespeare's plays and defines specific Shakespearean aesthetic practices in his use of desire, death and mourning as resources for art. Hugh Grady draws on a tradition of aesthetic theorists who understand art as always formed in a specific historical moment but as also distanced from its context through its form and Utopian projections. Grady sees A Midsummer Night's Dream, Timon of Athens, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet as displaying these qualities, showing aesthetic theory's usefulness for close readings of the plays. The book argues that such social-minded 'impure aesthetics' can revitalize the political impulses of the new historicism while opening up a new aesthetic dimension in the current discussion of Shakespeare.

Closely examining the relationship between the political and the utopian in five major plays from different phases of Shakespeare's career, Hugh Grady shows the dialectical link between the earlier political dramas and the late plays or tragicomedies. Reading Julius Caesar and Macbeth from the tragic period alongside The Winter's Tale and Tempest from the utopian end of Shakespeare's career, with Antony and Cleopatra acting as a transition, Grady reveals how, in the late plays, Shakespeare introduces a transformative element of hope while never losing a sharp awareness of suffering and death. The plays presciently confront dilemmas of an emerging modernity, diagnosing and indicting instrumental politics and capitalism as largely disastrous developments leading to an empty world devoid of meaning and community. Grady persuasively argues that the utopian vision is a specific dialectical response to these fears and a necessity in worlds of injustice, madness and death.

Closely examining the relationship between the political and the utopian in five major plays from different phases of Shakespeare's career, Hugh Grady shows the dialectical link between the earlier political dramas and the late plays or tragicomedies. Reading Julius Caesar and Macbeth from the tragic period alongside The Winter's Tale and Tempest from the utopian end of Shakespeare's career, with Antony and Cleopatra acting as a transition, Grady reveals how, in the late plays, Shakespeare introduces a transformative element of hope while never losing a sharp awareness of suffering and death. The plays presciently confront dilemmas of an emerging modernity, diagnosing and indicting instrumental politics and capitalism as largely disastrous developments leading to an empty world devoid of meaning and community. Grady persuasively argues that the utopian vision is a specific dialectical response to these fears and a necessity in worlds of injustice, madness and death.

John Donne has been one of the most controversial poets in the history of English literature, his complexity and intellectualism provoking both praise and censure. In this major re-assessment of Donne's poetry, Hugh Grady argues that his work can be newly appreciated in our own era through Walter Benjamin's theory of baroque allegory. Providing close readings of The Anniversaries, The Songs and Sonnets, and selected other lyrics, this study reveals Donne as being immersed in the aesthetic of fragmentation that define both the baroque and the postmodernist aesthetics of today. Synthesizing cultural criticism and formalist analysis, Grady illuminates Donne afresh as a great poet for our own historical moment.