Re-Humanising Shakespeare: Literary Humanism, Wisdom and Modernity
Andrew Mousley
Abstract
Can Shakespeare help with the question of how to live? This book argues that although Shakespeare himself contributed to the uncertainties of modern living, his work can still serve as a source of existential wisdom and guidance. It examines, through a wide range of Shakespeare's plays, the conditions under which human beings flourish or perish. Love, ethics, emotion, vulnerability and humility are amongst the topics discussed as part of the book's argument that Shakespeare is continually at pains to reclaim the human from its complete liquefaction. The book offers new ways of understanding th ... More
Can Shakespeare help with the question of how to live? This book argues that although Shakespeare himself contributed to the uncertainties of modern living, his work can still serve as a source of existential wisdom and guidance. It examines, through a wide range of Shakespeare's plays, the conditions under which human beings flourish or perish. Love, ethics, emotion, vulnerability and humility are amongst the topics discussed as part of the book's argument that Shakespeare is continually at pains to reclaim the human from its complete liquefaction. The book offers new ways of understanding the relevance of humanism to literature and ideas of literary value, and provides an account of modernity that illuminates the relationship between ‘theory’, scepticism and literary humanism.
Keywords:
Shakespeare,
how to live,
literary value,
modernity,
love,
ethics,
emotion,
vulnerability,
humility,
humanism
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2007 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780748623181 |
| Published to Edinburgh Scholarship Online: March 2012 |
DOI:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623181.001.0001 |
