Overview

This book examines the relationship between art and politics in the work of William Shakespeare and others in the early modern era, with a focus on the relation between aesthetics and sensory experience. From the 1980s, the turn to political concerns in Renaissance studies was dictated by forms of cultural materialism that staked their claims against the aesthetic dimension of the work. Recently, however, the more robustly political conception of the aesthetic formulated by theorists such as Theodor Adorno and Jacques RanciÈre has revitalized political aesthetics generally and early modern studies in particular. For these theorists, aesthetics forms the crucial link between politics and the most fundamental phenomenological organization of the world, what RanciÈre terms the “distribution of the sensible.”   Taking up this expansive conception of aesthetics, Political Aesthetics in the Era of Shakespeare suggests that the political stakes of the literary work - and Shakespeare's work in particular - extend from the most intimate dimensions of affective response to the problem of the grounds of political society as such. The approaches to aesthetic thought included in this volume explore the intersections between the literary work and the full range of concerns animating the field today: political philosophy, affect theory, and ecocritical analysis of environs and habitus. At the same time, political aesthetics holds its own distinctive promise for reopening the question of the relation between art and the political domain. This collection will be an important resource for students of Shakespeare and the Renaissance, and for those interested in the promise of current political and aesthetic theory.

Full Product Details

Author:   Christopher Pye ,  Julia Lupton ,  Jennifer R. Rust ,  Andrew Sisson
Publisher:   Northwestern University Press
Imprint:   Northwestern University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.40cm , Height: 2.20cm , Length: 23.10cm
Weight:   0.530kg
ISBN:  

9780810142183

ISBN 10:   081014218
Pages:   296
Publication Date:   30 June 2020
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

"1. Christopher Pye, Introduction: Early Modern Political Aesthetics Section I: An Early Modern Aesthetic 2. Andrew Sisson, ""'No Toy But Was Her Pattern': Renaissance Friendship and the Rise of Aesthetics in The Two Noble Kinsmen"" 3. Christopher Pye, ""Lear and the Space of the World"" 4. Russell Leo, ""Towards a Critical Aesthetics: Thomas Rymer on Shakespeare, Poetic Justice and the Reasonableness of Christianity"" Section II: Aesthetics and the Politics of the Representable 5. Tracey Sedinger, ""Shakespeare and the Plebs"" 6. Joan Pong Linton, ""Timon's Hunger in the Forest: Towards a Political Aesthetics of Being Beside Oneself"" 7. Jennifer Rust, ""Political Aesthetics and Political Theology in Midsummer Night's Dream"" 8. Joel M. Dodson, ""Need makes good schoolers"": Spender and the Poverty of Aesthetics"" Section III: Island Voices 9. Lydia Heinrichs, ""I…Will Cry It O'er Again"": Virgil, The Tempest, and the Aesthetics of Imitation"" 10. Hugh Grady, ""The Political and the Aesthetic in Shakespeare's The Tempest"" 11. Colby Gordon, ""A Diversity of Sounds, All Horrible': The Political Aesthetics of Soundscapes in The Tempest"" 12. Julia Lupton, ""Shakespeare's Sturm, Caliban's Drang"""

Reviews

This is an excellent collection of essays by some of the most interesting scholars working early modern studies today. The essays collected here demonstrate why the aesthetic remains a fundamental topic of critical inquiry for early modern studies. Extending well beyond formalist analysis with which it is most often associated, this volume helps us understand how the aesthetic is foundational to any understanding of social being, political community, and the environment. --Graham Hammill, author of The Mosaic Constitution: Political Theology and Imagination from Machiavelli to Milton

Author Information

Christopher Pye is the Class of 1924 Professor of English at Williams College.

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