Overview

We share with Shakespeare, it seems, the assumption that to be human is to be an interpreter of oneself, others and the world seeking but not always arriving at understanding. Shakespeare, the Reformation and the Interpreting Self explores this perspective on human subjectivity. This study reads the complex, compelling representations of the self as an interpreter (and misinterpreter) of reality in Shakespeare's 'problem plays' alongside an intellectual history that links the culture-shaping theological hermeneutics of the playwright's day to the similarly influential philosophical hermeneutics of our times. What is it to be an interpreting self? This book's critical approach brings to the fore questions about the self's finitude, agency, motivations, self-knowledge and ethical relation to others, questions that were of great relevance in Shakespeare's England and which continue to resonate in our present-day dilemmas and debates about human experience and human being.

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9781474461948

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"""Roberta Kwan's considered, deeply informed and lively book shows the act of interpretation, and the condition of hermeneutical uncertainty, to be central to works of drama emerging in an age passionately divided over the question how can we know?"" A fine contribution to literary criticism and to studies of religion.?"""" -Peter Holbrook, Australian Catholic University"

Author Information

Roberta Kwan is an Honorary Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Media, Communication, Creative Arts, Language, and Literature at Macquarie University, Sydney. Her research explores the intersections of early modern drama, theology and philosophy. She has published several scholarly articles in this field.

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