65 research outputs found
Modernity Unbound: Birmingham, Shakespeare, and the French Revolutions
George Dawson (1821-71) was the visionary behind the foundation of the Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library for all the people of the city, regardless of class or creed. This article explores the connections he made between Shakespeare and the revolutions in France. In 1848, Dawson strode the barricades of Paris with Emerson. He was also acquainted with Thomas Carlyle. His understanding of Shakespeareâs revolutionary potential drew from but also differed from the ideas about the Bard developed by these more famous thinkers. For Dawson, what Keats termed Shakespeareâs ânegative capabilityâ is positive capability raised to a higher power: the capacity to enter into and realise not just one but any number of characters. This inspired and informed the ambitious liberalism of Dawsonâs âCivic Gospelâ, helping to make late-nineteenth-century Birmingham a progressive modern city, from which we can still learn today.Câest au visionnaire George Dawson (1821-71) que lâon doit la crĂ©ation de la Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library, ouverte Ă tou.te.s, sans distinction de classe ou de croyance. Le prĂ©sent article explore les liens quâil fit entre Shakespeare et les rĂ©volutions en France. En 1848, Dawson monta aux cĂŽtĂ©s dâEmerson sur les barricades parisiennes. Il rencontra aussi Thomas Carlyle. La vision que Dawson avait du potentiel rĂ©volutionnaire de Shakespeare sâinspirait, tout en Ă©tant diffĂ©rente, des thĂ©ories que ces penseurs mieux connus avaient dĂ©veloppĂ©es Ă propos du Barde. Pour Dawson, ce que Keats nommait la « capacitĂ© nĂ©gative » est en rĂ©alitĂ© une capacitĂ© positive dotĂ©e dâune plus grande puissance, celle de faire corps avec et de rĂ©aliser non pas un seul mais un nombre infini de personnages. Câest ce qui inspira et nourrit le libĂ©ralisme ambitieux de « lâĂvangile Civil » de Dawson, qui contribua Ă faire de Birmingham, Ă la fin du XIXe siĂšcle, une ville moderne et progressiste, dont nous avons encore Ă apprendre aujourdâhui
Shame in Shakespeare
This thesis is a critical study of the theme of shame in Shakespeare. The first chapter defines the senses in which shame is used. Chapter Two analyses the workings of shame in pre-renaissance literature. The argument sets aside the increasingly discredited shame-culture versus guilt-culture antithesis still often applied to classical and Christian Europe; then classical and Christian shame are compared. Chapter Three focuses on shame in the English Renaissance, with illustrations from Spenser, Marlowe, Jonson, and Milton. Attention is also paid to the cultural context, for instance, to the shaming sanctions employed by the church courts. It is argued that, paradoxically, the humanist aspirations of this period made men and women more vulnerable to shame: more aware of falling short of ideals and open to disappointment and the reproach of self and others. The fourth chapter is an introductory account of Shakespearean shame; examples are drawn from the plays and poems preceding the period of the major tragedies, circa. 1602-9. This lays the groundwork, both conceptually and in terms of Shakespeare's development, for the main part of the thesis, Part Two, which offers detailed readings of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. In Each case, a consideration of the theme of shame illuminates the text in question in new ways. For example, and exploration of shame in Hamlet uncovers a neglected spiritual dimension; and it is argued that, despite critical tradition, shame, rather than jealousy, is the key to Othello, and that Antony and Cleopatra establishes the attraction and limitation of shamelessness. The last Chapter describes Shakespeare's distinctive and ultimately Christian vision of shame. In a tail-piece it is suggested that this account of Shakespearean shame casts an intriguing light on a little-known interpretation of Shakespeare's last days by the historian E.R.C. Brinkworth
âTo sin in loving virtueâ: desire and possession in Measure for Measure
This essay offers a startling new reading of Shakespeareâs Angelo as a paradoxical if not tragic hero who discovers in his sudden and inexorable impulse to rape a nun in the dark that desire is always more-or-less demonic â even, and perhaps especially, when it is most elevated and for what is most sacred and rightly lovable. The burden of Angeloâs tragic knowledge is that we âsin in loving virtueâ, that we are more like the carrion than the violet in the sun, that we âcorrupt with virtuous seasonâ. Measure for Measure emphasises we cannot but desire as a self and in a body, to the effect that the very otherness we honour in desire we immediately want to compromise by enjoying it for our own. The paper will argue that though it is Angelo who emblematises this, it is no less true of Isabella; and it is especially depressingly and irredeemably the case with the Duke
To Sin in Loving Virtue: Desire and Possession in Measure for Measure
This essay offers a startling new reading of Shakespeareâs Angelo as a paradoxical if not tragic hero who discovers in his sudden and inexorable impulse to rape a nun in the dark that desire is always more-or-less demonic â even, and perhaps especially, when it is most elevated and for what is most sacred and rightly lovable. The burden of Angeloâs tragic knowledge is that we âsin in loving virtueâ, that we are more like the carrion than the violet in the sun, that we âcorrupt with virtuous seasonâ. Measure for Measure emphasises we cannot but desire as a self and in a body, to the effect that the very otherness we honour in desire we immediately want to compromise by enjoying it for our own. The paper will argue that though it is Angelo who emblematises this, it is no less true of Isabella; and it is especially depressingly and irredeemably the case with the Duke
- âŠ