The resonance that Jacques Derrida s theory of deconstruction had in the field of Shakespearean criticism beginning with the late seventies was just as dramatic as the playwright s literary works. With a revolutionary promise to liberate interpretation from the reigns of logocentrism and of the authorial figure, deconstruction created the premises of unbound readings resistant to fixed signification. The early nineties, however, signaled a radical shift towards a humanist perspective which determined Shakespeare s central position Western literary canon. The author reviews the development of these two critical directions and offers a parallel reading of Shakespeare s plays in order to advance the view that the history of Shakespearean criticism is an essentially human experience which, in its turn, encompasses critical and theoretical endeavors.
Poststructuralism may be broadly characterized as a move away from traditional Western foundationalist thinking. Such thinking is exemplified by post-enlightenment transcendentalism, humanism and subject-centredness. This study aims to contribute to the poststructuralist decentering of the subject by means of the application of the critical practice of deconstruction - a type of analysis named and popularized by Jacques Derrida, who is himself frequently classified as a poststructuralist, in which the ruling logic of the text is undermined and the meaning of the text is therefore shown not to be fully present within it - to four texts by a writer who is arguably among the most prominent within the English literary canon: William Shakespeare. The first deconstructive reading centres around the court scene at the climax of the bond story in The Merchant of Venice. Here the apparent contrast between the restrictive law - which views Shylock's claim of a pound of Antonio's flesh as valid - and justice and mercy - which regard adherence to this bond as contrary to the spirit of the law - is collapsed, and justice is shown to be capable of being as restrictive as the law, while mercy becomes embroiled in all the trading that occurs in The Merchant of Venice, and demonstrates the capacity to be mercenary. The Tempest is examined next: the starting point is the apparent Nature/Culture distinction within the play. The reading is influenced by Derrida's use of the notion of supplementarity in his examination in Ķ That Dangerous Supplement ;Ķ of the Nature/Culture distinction in Rousseau. Particular attention is given first to the wedding masque, where the central figure of Ceres, who is goddess of agriculture and marriage, and also the source of seasonal changes, is shown to problematize any absolute distinctions between Nature and Culture. Such distinctions are further collapsed with reference to Prospero and Miranda's teaching of language to Caliban, as the latter, who supposedly is representative of natural man, is shown to have had his thought supplemented by language before Prospero's arrival on the island. Hamlet is approached with a reading that again draws from Derrida - this time his exploration of Mallarm? 's 'Mimique' in 'The Double Session'. Plato's theory of forms also becomes involved as this chapter plays with the distinction between Being and imitation, destabilizing this distinction within Hamlet and problematizing Hamlet's question: 'To be, or not to be'. And finally, the chapter on Measure for Measure is concerned with the ideas of restraint and freedom, inspecting Lucio's suggestion that his restraint arises from 'too much liberty', as well as many other instances in the play where restraint, as well as freedom - which seems at times to function in the same way as restraint - seems significant. The reading draws attention to its own impulse to restrain the reader with the truisms it presents by being written in the form of thirty-four aphorisms, and thus alludes to Derrida's 'Aphorism Countertime'.
The most influential treatments of Shakespeare's Sonnets have ignored the impact of theology on his poetics, examining instead the poet's "secular" emphasis on psychology and subjectivity. Reading Shakespeare's Will offers the first systematic account of the theology behind the poetry. Investigating the poetic stakes of Christianity's efforts to assimilate Jewish scripture, the book reads Shakespeare through the history of Christian allegory. To "read Shakespeare's will," Freinkel argues, is to read his bequest to and from a literary history saturated by religious doctrine. Freinkel thus challenges the common equation of subjectivity with secularity, and defines Shakespeare's poetic voice in theological rather than psychoanalytic terms. Tracing from Augustine to Luther the religious legacy that informs Shakespeare's work, Freinkel suggests that we cannot properly understand his poetry without recognizing it as a response to Luther's Reformation. Delving into the valences and repercussions of this response, Reading Shakespeare's Will charts the notion of a "theology of figure" that helped to shape the themes, tropes, and formal structures of Renaissance literature and thought.
This book is an attempt at deconstructive counter-reading or at what Jonathan Dollimore called “creative vandalism” (2018) of existing cultural or literary texts. Deconstruction is a much maligned or a much misunderstood word and for many, it usually bears a pejorative ring. While most would flaunt their familiarity with some of its philosophic jargons, for the majority, it is an area to be dismissed as intellectual obscurity or abstruse ‘high theory’. In fact there is a serious dearth of Derrida scholarship because of our collective aversion to Derrida that emanates from our lack of familiarity or engagement with deconstruction theory or with the philosophy of deconstruction. Norm-deviant reading strategies of deconstruction offer fresh insights and rebellious interpretative possibilities. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Twelve clear and effective essays shed new light on Shakespeare. The contributors write in, on, and sometimes against deconstruction, the most powerful and controversial theoretical movement in decades. Writing about several plays and sonnets, the critics explore the contribution of deconstruction to our understanding of Shakespeare. This unique and wide-ranging collection of essays will interest Shakespeareans and theorists alike.
Macbeth is discussed in relation to Derrida's notion of the metaphysics of presence. Fawkner argues that the quest for metaphysical certitude in Macbeth is related to the hero's transformation from a heroic to a post-heroic status.
Dealing mainly with the works of William Shakespeare, the essays in Close Readings without Readings reflect Stephen Booth’s lifelong interest in uncovering the ways great literature works upon readers. As the book’s title suggests, the author does not aim to create new or novel interpretations or to uncover the political agendas of literary works, but to notice language patterns—repetitions, analogies, correspondences, echoes, overtones—and other ways in which the choice and the arrangement of words affect readers. For Booth, close reading is a practice of attentiveness. He notices how, why, and in what ways Shakespeare’s works affect his readers. Whether readers agree with the premises of a literary work or not, they subject themselves, knowingly or not, to its effects. For Booth, what we value in literature is the experience. He has devoted his own work to recognizing the nature, process, and functions of reading literature, and to teaching others to do the same. Recent years have seen Booth’s efforts recognized by volumes dedicated both to close reading and to his achievements as editor, scholar, critic, and teacher.
This book offers a theoretical rationale for the emerging presentist movement in Shakespeare studies and goes on to show, in a series of close readings, that a presentist Shakespeare is not an anachronism. Relying on a Brechtian aesthetic of "naïve surrealism" as the performative model of the early modern, urban, public theater, James O’Rourke demonstrates how this Brechtian model is able to capture the full range of interplays that could take place between Shakespeare’s words, the nonillusionist performance devices of the early modern stage, and the live audiences that shared the physical space of the theatre with Shakespeare’s actors. O’Rourke argues that the limitations placed upon the critical energies of early modern drama by the influential new historicist paradigm of contained subversion is based on a poetics of the sublime, which misrepresents the performative aesthetic of the theater as a self-sufficient spectacle that compels reception in its own terms. Reimagining Shakespeare as our contemporary, O’Rourke shows how the immanent critical logic of Shakespeare’s works can enter into dialogue with our most sophisticated critiques of our cultural fictions.
