Edinburgh Critical Studies in Shakespeare and Philosophy – serie

Shakespeare's Theater of Judgment makes a case for the social and ethical importance of judgment in politics, law, art, and everyday life. It delves deep into the intellectual culture of Renaissance England and the dynamics of Shakespearean theater to recover a positive, collaborative, and future-oriented understanding of judgment, something largely lacking in contemporary social and philosophical discourse. Presenting a series of chapters organized around single keywords, the book enlists the help of Shakespeare to assemble a new lexicon for judgment, one that allows us to think and talk about our capacity for discernment in cooperative and community-making terms. Readers of Shakespeare's Theater of Judgment will come away with a clear and urgent sense of why judgment is an indispensable component of public life, and why theater offers a particularly powerful locale for cultivating it.

Shakespeare’s Theater of Judgment makes a case for the social and ethical importance of judgment in politics, law, art, and everyday life. It delves deep into the intellectual culture of Renaissance England and the dynamics of Shakespearean theater to recover a positive, collaborative, and future-oriented understanding of judgment, something largely lacking in contemporary social and philosophical discourse. Presenting a series of chapters organized around single keywords, the book enlists the help of Shakespeare to assemble a new lexicon for judgment, one that allows us to think and talk about our capacity for discernment in cooperative and community-making terms. Readers of Shakespeare’s Theater of Judgment will come away with a clear and urgent sense of why judgment is an indispensable component of public life, and why theater offers a particularly powerful locale for cultivating it.

Most scholars of early modern English literature consider Cartesian rationalism to be a poor theoretical lens. Though René Descartes figures as one of the most important philosophers in the early modern period, and in the history of philosophy itself, he has received scorn from literary scholars of the Renaissance who have become skeptical of “heroes of subjectivity.” Cartesian Theaters, Shakespearean Minds challenges the commonplace dichotomy between Cartesian subjectivity and early modern material culture and reconsiders Descartes as a foundational figure in early modern literary studies. It corrects outdated readings by scholars that would position him as a champion of disembodied mind. Instead, Nathan Pensky argues that both Descartes and Shakespeare, as well as several of the latter’s contemporaries, draw from overlapping philosophical histories, and that the mind-body problem as evident in early modern drama clearly anticipates Cartesian thought.

We know William Shakespeare matters but we cannot pinpoint, precisely, why he matters. Lacking reasons why, we do our best to involve him in others, or involve others in him. He has been branded many times over—as Catholic, Protestant, Materialist, Marxist, Psychoanalytic, Feminist, Postcolonial, Popular, Cultural, and, even, Popular-Cultural. In many ways, Shakespeare is overwrought. Why one more ‘approach’ to Shakespeare? One reason is because whatever these approaches say about tragedy in particular, none of them help us to feel tragedy. Or, rather, they subordinate tragedy to something else—to considerations of, say, class, race, or gender. What these approaches manage to do is explain tragedy away. What this book does is to help us feel tragedy first and foremost—hence to perceive it better. The aim of Amir Khan’s counterfactual criticism of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, A Winter’s Tale and Othello, then, is precisely to reanimate the tragic effect, long since lost in some deluge of explanation.

Explores Jacques Derrida’s distinctive approach to ShakespeareOffers the first comprehensive and accessible account and discussion of Derrida’s engagement with ShakespeareChallenges the way we have traditionally come to think about the interdisciplinary relationship between literature and philosophy, as well as literary geniusContextualises Derrida’s readings of Shakespeare within his wider philosophical project and discusses in how far they relate to – or are distinct from – his engagement with other dramatic or literary worksThis book brings to light Derrida’s rich and thought-provoking discussions of Shakespearean drama. Contextualising Derrida’s readings of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice and King Lear within his wider philosophical project, Alfano explores what draws Derrida to Shakespeare and what makes him particularly suitable for philosophical thought. The author also makes the case for Derrida’s singular understanding of the relationship between philosophy and Shakespeare and his radical idea of what literary genius is.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet insisted that ‘the play’s the thing’; Edmund Husserl’s philosophy advised us to (re)turn our attention ‘back to the things themselves!’ How might a careful, detailed exploration of the basic ‘things’ of Shakespearean theatre illuminate his plays in performance? Taking up this question, The Play and the Thing offers the first book-length phenomenological study of Shakespearean stage craft, from the ground up. The book approaches the study of Shakespearean theatre by attending to the ways in which three of those basic things – Bodies, Objects, and Spaces – might appear to perception in the act of performance. As such, it demonstrates how the principal, if at times divergent, strands of phenomenological enquiry can offer insight into those particular things and the theatrical practices they engender(ed). Cutting across both early modern and modern-day performative and textual praxis, The Play and the Thing both explicates and enacts phenomenology as an illuminating approach to Shakespearean theatre.

Illuminates our understanding of the soul as a historically and philosophically vital concept through Shakespearean dramaSecond Death seeks to revitalise our understanding of the soul as a philosophically profound, theoretically radical, and ultimately—and counterintuitively—theatrically realised concept. The book contends that the work of Shakespeare, when closely read alongside early modern cultural and religious writings, helps us understand the soul’s historical placement as a powerful paradox: it was essential to establishing humanity but resistant to clear representation. Drawing from current critical theory as well as extensive historical research, Second Death examines works of Shakespearean drama, including The Merchant of Venice, Coriolanus, and The Winter’s Tale, to suggest that rather than simply being incapable of understanding or physical realisation, the soul expressed itself in complex and subtle modes of performance. As a result, this book offers new ways of looking at identity, theatre, and spirituality in Shakespeare’s era and in our own.  Key FeaturesProvides understanding of the soul as not only a religious, cultural, and literary concept, but also a theatrical oneDiscusses genealogy of the philosophical and theological traditions that inform the soul’s placement in the early modern era, from Plato to Protestantism Includes novel readings of key works of Shakespearean drama along with substantial analyses of other Shakespeare plays (King Lear, Hamlet) as well as other early modern works (by John Donne, Christopher Marlowe, John Foxe, John Stow, Thomas Middleton, John Milton, and others)Draws new interdisciplinary connections among theatre studies, Shakespeare, critical theory, and religious studies

Argues that Shakespeare transforms philosophies of comedy and melancholy by revising them concomitantlyIconic as Hamlet is, Shakespearean comedy showcases an extraordinary reliance on melancholy that ultimately reminds us of the porous demarcation between laughter and sorrow. This richly contextualized study of Shakespeare’s comic engagement with sadness contends that the playwright rethinks melancholy through comic theatre and conversely, re-theorizes comedy through melancholy. In fashioning his own comic interpretation of the humour, Shakespeare distils an impressive array of philosophical discourses on the matter, from Aristotle to Robert Burton and as a result, transforms the theoretical afterlife of both notions. The book suggests that the deceptively potent sorrow at the core of plays such as The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, or The Winter’s Tale influences modern accounts of melancholia elaborated by Sigmund Freud, Judith Butler, and others. What’s so funny about melancholy in Shakespearean comedy? It might just be its reminder that, behind roaring laughter, one inevitably finds the subtle pangs of melancholy. Key FeaturesOffers new readings of nine Shakespearean comedies centred on their extensive, interconnected treatments of melancholyUnderscores Shakespeare’s significant revisions of philosophical discourses on melancholy, both classical and early modern, while tailoring the concept to specific comic purposesArgues that the particular sense of melancholy that Shakespeare develops throughout his comic canon informs later theorizations of melancholia and related concepts in psychoanalysis, performance studies and affect theoryContributes to the ongoing interdisciplinary critical effort to deepen our understanding of the nature, history and impact of melancholy on Western culture by drawing particular attention to its conflation of emotional and artistic overtones

Examines the way that theatrical representations of chastity inform broader concerns about the commoditisation of people in early capitalismChaste Value reassesses chastity’s significance in early modern drama, arguing that presentations of chastity inform the stage’s production of early capitalist subjectivity and social difference. Plays invoke chastity—itself a quasi-commodity—to interrogate the relationship between personal and economic value. Through chastity discourse, the stage disrupts pre-capitalist ideas of intrinsic value while also reallocating such value according to emerging hierarchies of gender, race, class, and nationality. Chastity, therefore, emerges as a central category within early articulations of humanity, determining who possesses intrinsic value and, conversely, whose bodies and labor can be incorporated into market exchange.Key FeaturesReevaluates early modern drama’s engagement with female chastity, situating them within broader anxieties about personal commoditization in early capitalist EnglandOffers an update/corrective to new economic critical approaches by demonstrating how concerns about personal and economic value shape emerging hierarchies of race, class, gender, and nationalityUniquely synthesizes current topics of concern in early modern literary studiesOffers innovative readings of seventeen literary works in relation to early modern debates about value, exchange, commoditization, and subjectivity

A detailed exploration of the significance of Hebrew Biblical stories in The Merchant of VeniceWhat happens when we consider Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice as a play with ‘real’ Jewish characters who are not mere ciphers for anti-Semitic Elizabethan stereotypes? Is Shylock Jewish studies Shakespeare’s extensive use of stories from the Hebrew Bible in The Merchant of Venice, and argues that Shylock and his daughter Jessica draw on recognizably Jewish ways of engaging with those narratives throughout the play. By examining the legacy of Jewish exegesis and cultural lore surrounding these biblical episodes, this book traces the complexity and richness of Merchant’s Jewish aspect, spanning encounters with Jews and the Hebrew Bible in the early modern world as well as modern adaptations of Shakespeare’s play on the Yiddish stage. Key FeaturesAnalyses alternative contexts for the moral agency of Jewish characters in The Merchant of VeniceProvides an innovative study of Renaissance Christian Hebraism in England and English perceptions of Jews and Jewishness in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuriesDiscusses important nineteenth- and twentieth-century Yiddish-language adaptations of The Merchant of VeniceMakes a provocative and original argument about the importance of Judaic biblical exegesis to the long afterlife of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice

This bold new study uses counterfactual thinking to enable us to feel, rather than to explain, Shakespeare s tragedies.

Explores Shakespeare's representation of the failure of democracy in ancient Rome Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic introduces Shakespeare as a historian of ancient Rome alongside figures such as Sallust, Cicero, St Augustine, Machiavelli, Gibbon, Hegel and Nietzsche. In Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare shows Rome’s transition from Republic to Empire. Why did Rome degenerate into an autocracy? Alternating between ruthless competition, Stoicism, Epicureanism and self-indulgent fantasies, Rome as Shakespeare sees it is inevitably bound for civil war. Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic considers Shakespeare’s place in the history of concepts of selfhood and reflects on his sympathy for Christianity, in light of his reception of medieval Biblical drama, as well as his allusions to the New Testament. Shakespeare’s critique of Romanitas anticipates concerns about secularisation, individualism and liberalism shared by philosophers such as Hannah Arendt, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel and Patrick Deneen.Key Features:Explains Shakespeare’s interpretation of the underlying causes of the Roman Republican civil warsShows how Shakespeare uses Roman history as a testing-ground to arbitrate between competing claims about human natureArticulates Shakespeare’s distinctive, compromise position on selfhoodSituates Shakespeare within the intellectual history of individualism, Christianity, Romanticism, secularization, and political liberalism

Explores Shakespeare's representation of the failure of democracy in ancient Rome Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic introduces Shakespeare as a historian of ancient Rome alongside figures such as Sallust, Cicero, St Augustine, Machiavelli, Gibbon, Hegel and Nietzsche. In Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare shows Rome’s transition from Republic to Empire. Why did Rome degenerate into an autocracy? Alternating between ruthless competition, Stoicism, Epicureanism and self-indulgent fantasies, Rome as Shakespeare sees it is inevitably bound for civil war. Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic considers Shakespeare’s place in the history of concepts of selfhood and reflects on his sympathy for Christianity, in light of his reception of medieval Biblical drama, as well as his allusions to the New Testament. Shakespeare’s critique of Romanitas anticipates concerns about secularisation, individualism and liberalism shared by philosophers such as Hannah Arendt, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel and Patrick Deneen.Key Features:Explains Shakespeare’s interpretation of the underlying causes of the Roman Republican civil warsShows how Shakespeare uses Roman history as a testing-ground to arbitrate between competing claims about human natureArticulates Shakespeare’s distinctive, compromise position on selfhoodSituates Shakespeare within the intellectual history of individualism, Christianity, Romanticism, secularization, and political liberalism

Explores the role of the mind in creating erotic experience on the early modern stageAdvances a new critical methodology that credits the role of cognition in the experience of erotic desire, and pleasure itselfExplores the philosophical underpinnings of erotic metaphors, drawing from ancient, early modern, and contemporary thinkers such as Aristotle, Giordano Bruno, Gaston Bachelard, Emmanuel Levinas, Kenneth Burke, George Lakoff, and Mark TurnerIlluminates the dramatic vitality of philosophical and contemplative erotic speechProvides the first full-length study that pairs John Lyly’s and William Shakespeare’s drama, uncovering new forms of intimacy in their playsTo ‘conceive’ desire is to acknowledge the generative potential of the erotic imagination, its capacity to impart form and make meaning out of the most elusive experiences. Drawing from cognitive theories about the metaphorical nature of thought, Gillian Knoll traces the contours of three conceptual metaphors – motion, space and creativity – that shape desire in plays by John Lyly and William Shakespeare. Metaphors, she argues, do more than narrate or express eros; they constitute erotic experience for Lyly’s and Shakespeare’s characters.

To 'conceive' desire is to acknowledge the generative potential of the erotic imagination, its capacity to impart form and make meaning out of the most elusive experiences. Drawing from cognitive theories about the metaphorical nature of thought, Gillian Knoll traces the contours of three conceptual metaphors motion, space and creativity that shape desire in plays by John Lyly and William Shakespeare. Metaphors, she argues, do more than narrate or express eros; they constitute erotic experience for Lyly's and Shakespeare's characters.

Establishes Shakespeare's plays as some of the period's most speculative political literature 'Shakespeare's Fugitive Politics' makes the case that Shakespeare's plays reveal there is always something more terrifying to the king than rebellion. The book seeks to move beyond the presumption that political evolution leads ineluctably away from autocracy and aristocracy toward republicanism and popular sovereignty. Instead, it argues for affirmative politics in Shakespeare the process of transforming scenes of negative affect into political resistance. 'Shakespeare's Fugitive Politics' argues that Shakespeare's affirmative politics appears not in his dialectical opposition to sovereignty, absolutism, or tyranny; nor is his affirmative politics an inchoate form of republicanism on its way to becoming politically viable. Instead, this study claims that it is in the place of dissensus that the expression of the eventful condition of affirmative politics takes place a fugitive expression that the sovereign order always wishes to shut down. Key FeaturesPromotes a new understanding of 'fugitive democracy'Establishes the presence of a form of alternative politics in early modern drama, articulated through the contours of theories of sovereigntyExplores how the parameters of contemporary radical politics take shape in major Shakespeare plays, including 'Coriolanus', 'King John', 'Henry V', 'Titus Andronicus', 'The Winter's Tale' and 'Julius Caesar'

Overturns orthodox thinking about morality in Shakespeare’s plays by updating our understanding of the human mindThis ground-breaking study fearlessly combines latest research in evolutionary psychology, historical scholarship and philosophy to answer a question that has eluded critics for centuries: what is Shakespeare’s moral vision? At a political and cultural moment in which many of us are taking stock and looking for meaning, and in which moral outrage and polarisation seem endemic, this book radically reimagines how we might approach great works of literature to find some answers.Key FeaturesProvocatively outlines how we might read literature for ethical contentBrings latest research on morality from evolutionary psychology and sociology to bear on the study of Shakespeare’s playsComprehensive coverage of moral philosophy in Shakespeare’s time and place, including the impact of the Renaissance, the Reformation and the rise of capitalismPlots ‘Shakespeare’s moral compass’ on six foundations (Authority, Loyalty, Fairness, Sanctity, Care, Liberty) with a chapter on each

Overturns orthodox thinking about morality in Shakespeare’s plays by updating our understanding of the human mindThis ground-breaking study fearlessly combines latest research in evolutionary psychology, historical scholarship and philosophy to answer a question that has eluded critics for centuries: what is Shakespeare’s moral vision? At a political and cultural moment in which many of us are taking stock and looking for meaning, and in which moral outrage and polarisation seem endemic, this book radically reimagines how we might approach great works of literature to find some answers.Key FeaturesProvocatively outlines how we might read literature for ethical contentBrings latest research on morality from evolutionary psychology and sociology to bear on the study of Shakespeare’s playsComprehensive coverage of moral philosophy in Shakespeare’s time and place, including the impact of the Renaissance, the Reformation and the rise of capitalismPlots ‘Shakespeare’s moral compass’ on six foundations (Authority, Loyalty, Fairness, Sanctity, Care, Liberty) with a chapter on each

Examines the early modern reception of classical Cynicism and the rise of literary realismPromotes a new understanding of the intersection between literary character and ethical character, especially with respect to literature’s role in facilitating belief in the revolutionary potential of individual critical agencyDeploys the reception history of Diogenes the Cynic as a methodological point of contact between historicist and presentist approaches to ShakespeareDraws new interdisciplinary connections between Shakespeare studies, literary theory, critical theory, and political philosophyIncludes novel readings of King Lear, Hamlet, and Timon of Athens as well as other early modern texts and a number of major works of modern philosophy and political theoryHighlighting the necessity of literary thinking to political philosophy, this book explores Shakespeare’s responses to sixteenth-century debates over the revolutionary potential of Cynic critical activity – debates that persist in later centuries and inform major developments in Western intellectual history. Analysing cynic characterisations of Lear’s Fool, Hamlet and Timon of Athens, Hershinow presents new ways of thinking about modernity’s engagement with classical models and literature’s engagement with politics.

Highlighting the necessity of literary thinking to political philosophy, this book explores Shakespeare's responses to sixteenth-century debates over the revolutionary potential of Cynic critical activity debates that persist in later centuries and inform major developments in Western intellectual history. Analysing cynic characterisations of Lear's Fool, Hamlet and Timon of Athens, Hershinow presents new ways of thinking about modernity's engagement with classical models and literature's engagement with politics.

Examines the influence of classical philosophy on revenge narratives by Shakespeare and his contemporariesThis book discovers within early modern revenge tragedy the surprising shaping presence of a wide array of classical philosophies not commonly affiliated with the genre. By recovering the pervasive influence of Aristotelian faculty psychology on The Spanish Tragedy, Aristotelian ethics on Titus Andronicus, Lucretian atomism on Hamlet, Galenic pneumatics on Antonio’s Revenge and Epictetian Stoicism on The Duchess of Malfi, Crosbie reveals how the very atmospheres and ontological assumptions of revenge tragedy exert their own kind of conditioning dramaturgical force. The book also revitalises our understanding of how the Renaissance stage, even at its most lurid, functions as a unique space for the era’s practical, vernacular engagement with received philosophy.Key FeaturesAnalyzes the twentieth-century development of revenge tragedy as a genre, and diagnoses the roots of modern criticism’s tendency to treat most philosophy as estranged from the violent work of revengeProvides fresh readings of five plays central to the revenge tragedy genre, paying close attention to the conditioning influence of classical philosophy on their narratives of retributionReveals how revenge tragedy’s distinctive ‘moods’ or ‘atmospheres’ emerge from fully-realized sets of ontological assumptions which help shape reception of retribution on the early modern stageDevelops new reception histories for five classical philosophical doctrines, revealing their currency and, what’s more, radical adaptability within early modern England

Examines the influence of classical philosophy on revenge narratives by Shakespeare and his contemporariesThis book discovers within early modern revenge tragedy the surprising shaping presence of a wide array of classical philosophies not commonly affiliated with the genre. By recovering the pervasive influence of Aristotelian faculty psychology on The Spanish Tragedy, Aristotelian ethics on Titus Andronicus, Lucretian atomism on Hamlet, Galenic pneumatics on Antonio’s Revenge and Epictetian Stoicism on The Duchess of Malfi, Crosbie reveals how the very atmospheres and ontological assumptions of revenge tragedy exert their own kind of conditioning dramaturgical force. The book also revitalises our understanding of how the Renaissance stage, even at its most lurid, functions as a unique space for the era’s practical, vernacular engagement with received philosophy.Key FeaturesAnalyzes the twentieth-century development of revenge tragedy as a genre, and diagnoses the roots of modern criticism’s tendency to treat most philosophy as estranged from the violent work of revengeProvides fresh readings of five plays central to the revenge tragedy genre, paying close attention to the conditioning influence of classical philosophy on their narratives of retributionReveals how revenge tragedy’s distinctive ‘moods’ or ‘atmospheres’ emerge from fully-realized sets of ontological assumptions which help shape reception of retribution on the early modern stageDevelops new reception histories for five classical philosophical doctrines, revealing their currency and, what’s more, radical adaptability within early modern England

Examines the way that theatrical representations of chastity inform broader concerns about the commoditisation of people in early capitalismChaste Value reassesses chastity’s significance in early modern drama, arguing that presentations of chastity inform the stage’s production of early capitalist subjectivity and social difference. Plays invoke chastity—itself a quasi-commodity—to interrogate the relationship between personal and economic value. Through chastity discourse, the stage disrupts pre-capitalist ideas of intrinsic value while also reallocating such value according to emerging hierarchies of gender, race, class, and nationality. Chastity, therefore, emerges as a central category within early articulations of humanity, determining who possesses intrinsic value and, conversely, whose bodies and labor can be incorporated into market exchange.Key FeaturesReevaluates early modern drama’s engagement with female chastity, situating them within broader anxieties about personal commoditization in early capitalist EnglandOffers an update/corrective to new economic critical approaches by demonstrating how concerns about personal and economic value shape emerging hierarchies of race, class, gender, and nationalityUniquely synthesizes current topics of concern in early modern literary studiesOffers innovative readings of seventeen literary works in relation to early modern debates about value, exchange, commoditization, and subjectivity

A detailed exploration of the significance of Hebrew Biblical stories in The Merchant of VeniceWhat happens when we consider Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice as a play with ‘real’ Jewish characters who are not mere ciphers for anti-Semitic Elizabethan stereotypes? Is Shylock Jewish studies Shakespeare’s extensive use of stories from the Hebrew Bible in The Merchant of Venice, and argues that Shylock and his daughter Jessica draw on recognizably Jewish ways of engaging with those narratives throughout the play. By examining the legacy of Jewish exegesis and cultural lore surrounding these biblical episodes, this book traces the complexity and richness of Merchant’s Jewish aspect, spanning encounters with Jews and the Hebrew Bible in the early modern world as well as modern adaptations of Shakespeare’s play on the Yiddish stage. Key FeaturesAnalyses alternative contexts for the moral agency of Jewish characters in The Merchant of VeniceProvides an innovative study of Renaissance Christian Hebraism in England and English perceptions of Jews and Jewishness in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuriesDiscusses important nineteenth- and twentieth-century Yiddish-language adaptations of The Merchant of VeniceMakes a provocative and original argument about the importance of Judaic biblical exegesis to the long afterlife of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice

Examines literary engagement with immateriality since the ‘material turn’ in early modern studiesProvides six case studies of works by Shakespeare, Donne, and Herbert, offering new readings of important literary texts of the English Renaissance alongside detailed chapters outlining attitudes towards immateriality in works of natural philosophy, medicine, and theologyEmploys an innovative organization around three major areas in which problem of immaterial was particularly pitched: Ontology, Theology, and Psychology (or Being, Believing, and Thinking)Includes wide-ranging references to early modern literary, philosophical, and theological textsDemonstrates how innovations in natural philosophy influenced thought about the natural world and how it was portrayed in literatureEngages with current early modern scholarship in the areas of material culture, cognitive literary studies, and phenomenologyImmateriality and Early Modern English Literature explores how early modern writers responded to rapidly shifting ideas about the interrelation of their natural and spiritual worlds. It provides six case studies of works by Shakespeare, Donne and Herbert, offering new readings of important literary texts of the English Renaissance alongside detailed chapters outlining attitudes towards immateriality in works of natural philosophy, medicine and theology. Building on the importance of addressing material culture in order to understand early modern literature, Knapp demonstrates how the literary imagination was shaped by changing attitudes toward the immaterial realm.

Immateriality and Early Modern English Literature explores how early modern writers responded to rapidly shifting ideas about the interrelation of their natural and spiritual worlds. It provides six case studies of works by Shakespeare, Donne and Herbert, offering new readings of important literary texts of the English Renaissance alongside detailed chapters outlining attitudes towards immateriality in works of natural philosophy, medicine and theology. Building on the importance of addressing material culture in order to understand early modern literature, Knapp demonstrates how the literary imagination was shaped by changing attitudes toward the immaterial realm.

Reconceptualises Shakespeare's representations of selfhood by drawing on the long history behind the modern West's assumption that to be human is to be an interpreter of realityProvides a ground-breaking contribution to the expanding field of study situated at the intersections of Shakespeare, religion and philosophyIlluminates the indebtedness of Shakespeare's dramatization of human understanding as interpretive to the Protestant Reformation's reconfiguring of people's relation to knowledge and people as knowers (that is, the Reformers' theological hermeneutics)Offers a distinctive vantage point on our sense of Shakespeare's modernity by employing a critical framework that shows the influence of the Reformers' hermeneutics on the thinking about humans as knowers of Hans-Georg Gadamer and other prominent modern philosophers of hermeneuticsPresents innovative, substantial readings of Shakespeare's 'problem plays' Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure and All's Well That Ends Well and their viewpoints on human subjectivityWe share with Shakespeare, it seems, the assumption that to be human is to know through interpretation. This innovative study examines Shakespeare's compelling dramatisations of the interpreting self through the lens of a hermeneutical tradition that spans culture-shaping early modern religious beliefs about human knowing and pivotal philosophical ideas of our age. What is it to be an interpreting self? Shakespeare, the Reformation and the Interpreting Self offers fresh perspectives on critical questions about the self's finitude, agency, motivations, self-knowledge and ethical relation to others; questions that were of great relevance in Shakespeare's England and which continue to frame present-day dilemmas and debates about human experience and human being.