Employing the analytical psychology of Carl Jung, Matthew A. Fike provides a fresh understanding of individuation in Shakespeare. This study of "the visionary mode" - Jung s term for literature that comes through the artist from the collective unconscious - combines a strong grounding in Jungian terminology and theory with myth criticism, biblical literary criticism, and postcolonial theory. Fike draws extensively on the rich discussions in the Collected Works of C. G. Jung to illuminate selected plays such as A Midsummer Night s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, The Henriad, Othello, and Hamlet in new and surprising ways. Fike s clear and thorough approach to Shakespeare offers exciting, original scholarship that will appeal to students and scholars alike.

In Shakespeare and Jung - The God in Time literary critic and philosopher James Driscoll presents original arguments for the existence and nature of God. He traverses the boundaries of art, philosophy, psychology, and religion to draw on Shakespeare, Carl Jung, and A. N. Whitehead to define and illuminate the interconnections of God and time. Time's irreversibility and continuous creation of novelty makes it the medium and engine of order, value, and meaning. Time connects and differentiates all, thereby making reality relational and allowing for feeling, thought, art, and science. Shakespeare, the writer with the greatest insight into human nature, dramatized the primacy of time in our lives. Time is the de facto God of Shakespeare's worlds. Shakespeare anticipated our own age when time began to displace eternity as the ground of reality. Jung gave us a new map of the psyche and terminology to explore more deeply the human condition, bound as it is in time, and the nature of deity. Driscoll carries Jung's insights further into the three paradigmatic revelations of the Western Godhead: The Book of Job, the Gospels, and Shakespeare's King Lear. Shakespeare the artist grasped the dynamics of the Western Godhead giving us a singular revelation of its dominant archetypes, Yahweh, Job, Prometheus, and Christ. The archetypes of the Western Godhead shaped the development of art, science, and technology and energized the ideals of progress and freedom. The West advanced rapidly in science, the arts, and human rights because of the unique archetypal dynamics of its God in Time.

Three plays analyzed from a Jungian perspective and a fresh wit, catching many contemporary nuances in these well-loved plays and their continuing relevance for today.

A close textual analysis of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra reveals the archetypal background which is still relevant in the psychological life of the author's clients. The power which the dark side of the feminine exerts on masculine consciousness; the desire of the feminine to find objectivity through this same masculine consciousness; the mutual hope of finding completion and fulfillment through the opposite: these are the themes not only of Shakespeare's play but of many people's lives.

Three plays analyzed from a Jungian perspective and a fresh wit, catching many contemporary nuances in these well-loved plays and their continuing relevance for today.

Three plays analyzed from a Jungian perspective and a fresh wit, catching many contemporary nuances in these well-loved plays and their continuing relevance for today. Barbara Rogers-Gardner has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Rutgers University and has published two novels as well as numerous scholarly articles. She has taught at Ramapo College of New Jersey, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is now a member of the faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute, a center for the study of Depth Psychology. From the book: "A model of Jung's mature, harmonious self is to be found in Prospero, who trusts that death is an initiation into divinity. Prospero's shadow is recognized and embraced in Caliban, the poetic, sensual monster who grounds us in pig-nuts and music. Not in individualism, the sort of maladaptive bog in which Claudius, lago, and Stephano sink, but in accommodating the self to the social order does the Shakespearean hero find his peace." "Dr. Rogers-Gardner places Shake-speare's characters under the lens of archetypal theory, showing us eruptions from the unconscious, fragmentation of the ego, and finally the maturation pro-cess in which opposites are conjoined. In this brilliant blend of Depth Psychol-ogy and current literary criticism, we cannot help but see ourselves." -Dr. C. Edward Crowther, Jungian psy-chotherapist and author of "Intimacy: Strategies for Successful Relationships"