Holding a Mirror up to Nature: Shame, Guilt, and Violence in Shakespeare
- ISBN-10
- 1108970397
- ISBN-13
- 9781108970396
- Category
- Psychology
- Pages
- 250
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2021-11-30
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Authors
- James Gilligan, David A.J. Richards
Description
Shakespeare has been dubbed the greatest psychologist of all time. This book seeks to prove that statement by comparing the playwright's fictional characters with real-life examples of violent individuals, from criminals to political actors. For Gilligan and Richards, the propensity to kill others, even (or especially) when it results in the killer's own death, is the most serious threat to the continued survival of humanity. In this volume, the authors show how humiliated men, with their desire for retribution and revenge, apocryphal violence and political religions, justify and commit violence, and how love and restorative justice can prevent violence. Although our destructive power is far greater than anything that existed in his day, Shakespeare has much to teach us about the psychological and cultural roots of all violence. In this book the authors tell what Shakespeare shows, through the stories of his characters: what causes violence and what prevents it.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2021-11-30
- - pages
- Ebook
- Cambridge University Press
Similar books
-
Tragedy and Philosophy
By Walter KaufmannSpecifically , mimesis has been linked with Hamlet's " hold the mirror up to nature , " which , as I have tried to show , was not at all what Aristotle meant ; and the authority of a supreme philosopher was ...
-
The Spanish American Roots of William Carlos Williams
By Julio Marz?nIn this poetically evocative work, Julio Marzan explores the Latin American roots of Williams' poetry.
-
The Mirror Up to Nature: The Technique of Shakespeare's Tragedies
By Virgil Keeble WhitakerThe Mirror Up to Nature: The Technique of Shakespeare's Tragedies
-
Shakespeare's Webs: Networks of Meaning in Renaissance Drama
By Arthur F. KinneyIt follows, then, that this “glass of fashion” for Ophelia (3.1.152) will write lines into a play of incest that, in holding the mirror up to his conception of nature, will have the power to expose and condemn.
-
The Lure of Perfection: Fashion and Ballet, 1780-1830
By Judith Bennahum... 3 World maps, 140-141 Wright, Edward, 118, 119 Yates, Frances, 112 Young, Bartholomew, 39 Zinzerling, Justus, 6 168 • Index.
-
"Fallen from the Symboled World": Precedents for the New Formalism
By Wyatt Prunty... 91 Bloom, Harold, 17, 18, 202, 297 Blue Swallows, The (Nemerov), 147–48, 166 “Blue Swallows, The” (Nemerov), 21, 70, 169, 180 “Blue Wine” (Hollander), 267 Blue Wine and Other Poems (Hollander), 265, 267 Bly, Robert, 6, 64 Boredom.
-
Philosophy and Literature in Times of Crisis: Challenging our Infatuation with Numbers
By Michael MackFor anything so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as t'were the mirror up to nature.37 Hamlet first insists on the isomorphism between life and literature, between word and ...
-
The Merchant of Venice
By Christopher McCulloughWarren Mitchell's casting as Shylock should have been important if only for the fact that it offers the example of a Jewish actor playing the part. However, Mitchell presents Shylock in precisely the manner that Antony Sher sought to ...
-
Rewriting the Thirties: Modernism and After
By Keith Williams, Steven MatthewsHold the mirror up to nature and you get —— sex and politics (moonlight is extra, but always in request) . . . Well, we don't mind a little sex, sir, providing it's treated in a light, aphrodisiacal manner and provided ther's a high ...
-
The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages
By Harold Bloom... and Signora Viviani eventually became “a little brown demon” for her disillusioned lover. ... Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, Dante, Chapman, Calderón, Shakespeare, Goethe, Tennyson, Joyce, Pound, and Wallace Stevens, among many others.