Shakespeares Compassion

This exploration of Shakespeare''s engagement with compassion brings Shakespeare''s classical literary heritage into conversation with key contemporary social and political debates addressing race, gender, sexuality and the relationship between humans and animals. Drawing on both the history of emotions and Shakespearean classical studies, the author argues that Shakespeare''s compassion both very precisely expresses his own historical and cultural moment and is at the same time the product of his close and continuous engagement with literature from the classical past. Through close readings of key plays, including Titus Andronicus , Richard III , Hamlet and King Lear, and the main classical sources - above all, Virgil''s Aeneid and Ovid''s Metamorphoses - this book argues that Shakespeare''s dramatization of compassion, far from expressing a sense of universal empathy, reveals a complex early modern emotion available to be solicited, manipulated and even monopolized as a discursive vehicle for the exclusion of others. It posits that Shakespeare inherited an understanding of the social efficacy of emotion from classical literature, and this informed the explorations of compassion in his work.As well as drawing on a number of further examples from other plays across the Shakespeare canon, this book situates Shakespeare''s thinking about compassion in relation to plays written for the early modern stage by contemporaries, including Thomas Kyd, George Peele, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, John Fletcher and Philip Massinger.>

Préface
This exploration of Shakespeare's engagement with compassion brings Shakespeare's classical literary heritage into conversation with key contemporary social and political debates addressing race, gender, sexuality and the relationship between humans and animals.

Auteur
Anne Sophie Refskou teaches comparative literature at Aarhus University, Denmark. She has taught theatre and performance studies at the University of Surrey, UK, and comparative literature at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. She has published widely on Shakespeare, performance and emotion.

Texte du rabat

"Through close readings of key plays - Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Hamlet and King Lear - the main classical sources and the drama of his contemporaries, this book argues that Shakespeare's dramatization of compassion, far from expressing a sense of universal empathy, reveals a complex early modern emotion available to be solicited and manipulated as a discursive vehicle for the exclusion of others. It demonstrates how Shakespeare's engagement with the classical literature enables his dramatization of key questions of race, gender, sexuality and the relationship between human beings and nonhuman animals that are central to the current critical field"--

Résumé
This book shows that Shakespeare's dramatization of compassion, far from expressing a sense of universal empathy, stages a conflicted emotion available to be solicited, manipulated and at times even monopolized as a discursive vehicle for the exclusion of others. Drawing on the history of emotions and on Shakespearean classical studies, Anne Sophie Refskou argues both that Shakespeare's compassion expresses his own historical and cultural moment and is at the same time the product of his close engagement with literature from the classical past. In so doing, she traces a set of recurrent strands in Shakespeare's engagement with discourses of compassion throughout his playwriting career, situating them in relation to plays written for the early modern stage by contemporaries, including Thomas Kyd, George Peele, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, John Fletcher and Philip Massinger. Individual chapters offer readings of Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Hamlet and King Lear by way of comparative analysis of key classical texts including Euripides' Hecuba and The Trojan Women, Vergil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses from which Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights drew sustained inspiration. Together, the chapters demonstrate how Shakespeare's engagement with the classical literature, from which he inherited a spacious understanding of the social efficacy of emotion, enables his dramatization of issues that are central to the current critical field, including questions of race, gender, sexuality and the relationship between human beings and nonhuman animals.

Contenu
Note on Texts and Translations Acknowledgements Introduction: Shakespeare's Compassion 1. Compassion's Exclusions: Titus Andronicus and the Power of Pity 2. Feeling Human: Compassion, Cruelty and Beastliness in Richard III 3. 'Pity me not': Hamlet's Queer Compassion 4. Compassion at a Distance: King Lear and Euripides Conclusion: Compassion after Shakespeare Notes References Index