Overview
Shakespeare's Big Men examines five Shakespearean tragedies - Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and Coriolanus - through the lens of generative anthropology and the insights of its founder, Eric Gans. Generative anthropology's theory of the origins of human society explains the social function of tragedy: to defer our resentment against the ""big men"" who dominate society by letting us first identify with the tragic protagonist and his resentment, then allowing us to repudiate the protagonist's resentful rage and achieve theatrical catharsis. Drawing on this hypothesis, Richard van Oort offers inspired readings of Shakespeare's plays and their representations of desire, resentment, guilt, and evil. His analysis revives the universal spirit in Shakespearean criticism, illustrating how the plays can serve as a way to understand the ethical dilemma of resentment and discover within ourselves the nature of the human experience.
Full Product Details
Author: Richard van Oort
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Imprint: University of Toronto Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.00cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.560kg
ISBN: 9781442650077
ISBN 10: 1442650079
Pages: 277
Publication Date: 11 May 2016
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Temporarily unavailable
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Reviews
Shakespeare's Big Men is an earnest, ambitious, and illuminating book... Van Oort's close readings, which occupy the better part of the book, are well paced, thorough, and careful... In the end, the greatest strength of the book is that van Oort manages to present a Shakespeare who is both an acute observer of human society and, as an artist, a contributor to it - someone whose tragic theater can defer violence. Admirers of Bradley and Girard will find a great deal to like in this book. Adherents to what Harold Bloom calls `French Shakespeare' or the `school of resentment' might do well to reckon with it. -- Blair Hoxby * Modern Philology (2018) * Shakespeare's Big Men by Richard van Oort is one of the most intriguing and thought-provoking books to appear on Shakespeare in the past few years. Drawing on the anthropologies of Eric Gans and Rene Girard, van Oort argues that Shakespeare's tragedies provide a way of dealing with the problem of resentment... Through compelling readings of Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and Coriolanus, van Oort proposes that Shakespearean tragedy goes further [than Greek tragedy] in its anthropological insights, thematizing tragedy's role in the discharge of resentment. -- Paul Kottman * Shakespeare Jahrbuch (2018) *
Author Information
Richard van Oort is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Victoria.
