The End of Kinship: 'Measure for Measure,' Incest and the Ideal of Universal Siblinghood - Brossura

Shell, Marc

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0801852420 ISBN 13: 9780801852428

Casa editrice: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr, 1995

Riassunto

In this commentary on Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure", Marc Shell focuses on the play's basic themes of sexual extremism, exchange and political order. At the crux of the play, he notes, the novice nun Isabella accuses her brother Claudio: "Is't not a kind of incest, to take life/From thine own sister's shame?". Shell's analysis shows how Claudio's request is a kind of incest in a reading that extends his earlier work on philosophical and literary economies. Developing fully the thematic role of the monastic orders in Shakespeare's drama, Shell demonstrates that the play lays bare some of Western culture's most fundamental tensions - between natural and political teleologies, between Christian and political ideals of brotherhood and the incest taboo, and between the pragmatic imperative to classify people and the moral imperative to treat them all alike.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

"This thoroughly postmodern commentary on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure focuses on the play's themes of sexual incest, economic exchange and political order. In this work Shell extends his previous close readings of the classics unveiling the philosophical and literary economics that underlie theme. This is sure to be considered one of the most outstanding revised interpretations of the bard this season." -- Reader's Review

L'autore:

Marc Shell is professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of The Economy of Literature and Money, Language, and Thought, also available from Johns Hopkins.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0801852420
• ISBN 13: 9780801852428
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 297