The turn to political concerns in Renaissance studies, beginning in the 1980s, 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 literary analysis 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. 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.

The Storm at Sea: Political Aesthetics in the Time of Shakespeare counters a tradition of cultural analysis that judges considerations of aesthetic autonomy in the early modern context to be either anachronistic or an index of political disengagement. Pye argues that for a post-theocratic era in which the mise-en-forme of the social domain itself was for the first time at stake, the problem of the aesthetic lay at the very core of the political; it is precisely through its engagement with the question of aesthetic autonomy that early modern works most profoundly explore their relation to matters of law, state, sovereignty, and political subjectivity. Pye establishes the significance of a “creationist” political aesthetic—at once a discrete historical category and a phenomenon that troubles our familiar forms of historical accounting—and suggests that the fate of such an aesthetic is intimately bound up with the emergence of modern conceptions of the political sphere. The Storm at Sea moves historically from Leonardo da Vinci to Thomas Hobbes; it focuses on Shakespeare and English drama, with chapters on Hamlet, Othello, A Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest, as well as sustained readings of As You Like It, King Lear, Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, and Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Engaging political thinkers such as Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben, Claude Lefort, and Roberto Esposito, The Storm at Sea will be of interest to political theorists as well as to students of literary and visual theory.

Shakespeare was fascinated by power throughout his career but also understood its dangers and limits. Utopian visions were his solution.

Beginning with a discussion of the political commonplaces in Elizabethan England, Talbert then focuses on the writings of Sir Thomas Smith, Richard Hooker, Sir Philip Sidney, and authors of seditious tracts and Elizabethan pageants. There emerges a process of thought that was conventional to Shakespeare's contemporaries and much more complex than that indicated by the Elizabethan "world-picture" alone. Originally published in 1962. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

This volume captures the diverse ways in which Shakespeare interacts with educational theory and practice. It explores the depiction of learning and education in the plays, the role of Shakespeare as pedagogue, and ways in which the teaching of Shakespeare can facilitate discussion of some of the urgent questions of modern times. The book offers a wide range of perspectives – historical, theoretical, theatrical. The Renaissance humanist learning underpinning Shakespeare’s own work is explored in essays that consider how the complexity of Shakespeare’s drama challenges early-modern pedagogical orthodoxies. From close analysis of individual, solitary reflection on Shakespeare’s writing, the book moves outward to engage with contemporary social issues around inclusivity, society, and the planet, demonstrating the many educational contexts in which Shakespeare is currently appropriated. Engaging with current questions of the value of literary study, the book testifies to the potentialities of an empowering Shakespearean pedagogy. Bringing together voices from a variety of institutions and from a wide range of educational perspectives, this volume will be essential reading for academics, researchers and post-graduate students of Shakespeare, literature in education, pedagogy and literary theory.

Shakespeare Survey is a yearbook of Shakespeare studies and production. Since 1948, the Survey has published the best international scholarship in English and many of its essays have become classics of Shakespeare criticism. Each volume is devoted to a theme, play, or group of plays; each also contains a section of reviews of that year's textual and critical studies and of the year's major British performances. The theme for Volume 69 is 'Shakespeare and Rome'. The complete set of Survey volumes is also available online at http://www.cambridge.org/online/shakespearesurvey. This fully searchable resource enables users to browse by author, essay and volume, search by play, theme and topic, and save and bookmark their results.

Politics and Aesthetics in European Baroque and Classicist Tragedy is a volume of essays investigating European tragedy in the seventeenth century, comparing Shakespeare, Vondel, Gryphius, Racine and several other vernacular tragedians, together with consideration of neo-Latin dramas by Jesuits and other playwrights. To what extent were similar themes, plots, structures and styles elaborated? How is difference as well as similarity to be accounted for? European drama is beginning to be considered outside of the singular vernacular frameworks in which it has been largely confined (as instanced in the conferences and volumes of essays held in the Universities of Munich and Berlin 2010-12), but up-to-date secondary material is sparse and difficult to obtain. This volume intends to help remedy that deficit by addressing the drama in a full political, religious, legal and social context, and by considering the plays as interventions in those contexts. Contributors are: Christian Biet, Jan Bloemendal, Helmer J. Helmers, Blair Hoxby, Sarah M. Knight, Tatiana Korneeva, Frans-Willem Korsten, Joel B. Lande, Russell J. Leo, Howard B. Norland, Kirill Ospovat, James A. Parente, Jr., Freya Sierhuis, Nienke Tjoelker and Emily Vasiliauskas.