Disowning Knowledge In Seven Plays of Shakespeare [Hardcover]

Reissued with an essay on Macbeth this is a collection of essays on Shakespeare's tragedies.Reissued with a new essay on Macbeth this famous collection of essays on Shakespeare's tragedies considers these plays as responses to the crisis of knowledge and the emergence of modern skepticism provoked by the new science of the late 16th and early 17th centuries.Reissued with a new essay on Macbeth this famous collection of essays on Shakespeare's tragedies considers these plays as responses to the crisis of knowledge and the emergence of modern skepticism provoked by the new science of the late 16th and early 17th centuries.Reissued with a new preface and a new essay on Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Coriolanius, Hamlet and The Winter's Tale, this famous collection of essays on Shakespeare's tragedies considers the plays as responses to the crisis of knowledge and the emergence of modern skepticism.Preface and acknowledgements; Preface to the updated edition; 1. Introduction; 2. The avoidance of love: a reading of King Lear; 3. Othello and the stake of the other; 4. Coriolanus and interpretation of politics; 5. Hamlet's burden of proof; 6. Recounting gains, showing losses: reading The Winter's Tale; 7. Macbeth appalled; Index of names and titles. Cavell's essays on Shakespeare--deep, intellectually tenacious, and humane meditations on the nature of artistic genius--are thrilling and essential reading. They illuminate the relation between skepticism and theater, transform the language of literary criticism, and heighten the ethical significance of aesthetic response. Stephen Greenblatt, Professor of Literature, University of California, Berkeley These beautiful essays on Shakespeare, lucid, complicated, and deeply moving, are unique in recent criticism for the conversation they forge between philosophy and literature. Unified by the twin themes of knowledge and acknowledgement...the volume brings together some of the most remarkable literary essays in modern scholarshiplCá