| Description |
1 online resource |
| Contents |
Cover -- The Drama of Complaint: Ethical Provocations in Shakespeare's Tragedy -- Copyright -- Acknowledgments -- Table of Contents -- Introduction: Scenes of Complaint -- 1. Forms of Desire -- 2. Forms of Ethical Thought -- 3. Shakespeare's Ethical Poetics -- 1: Signs of Life: Existential Complaint and the Creaturely Ethics of Complaining -- 1. Creaturely Pressures and Existential Complaint -- 2. Philosophy against Complaining -- 3. Speaking Feeling in King Lear -- 2: Ethical Demands: Judicial Complaint and the Call of Conscience -- 1. Hearing Judicial Complaint |
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2. Response and Responsibility in Richard III -- 3. Conscience and the Voices of Complaint -- 3: "Me and My Cause": Spectral Complaints and Sublime Motives -- 1. Volitional Excess and Spectral Complaint -- 2. Ghostly Excitations: Hamlet's Dull Revenge -- 3. Scenes of Animation: Hamlet's Dread Commands -- 4: Lamentable Objects: Good Audiences and the Art of Female Complaint -- 1. Idle Art: Female Complaint and Sympathetic Reception -- 2. Virtuous Tears: Tragic History as Female Complaint -- 3. Becoming Lamentable in Richard II |
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5: "Nobody, I Myself ": Deathbed Complaint and the Authority of Happiness Scripts -- 1. Deathbed Complaint and the Happiness Scripts of Domestic Tragedy -- 2. Othello and the Fragmented Deathbed Complaint -- 3. Interpreting the Scene of Complaint -- Bibliography -- Primary Sources -- Secondary Sources -- Index |
| Summary |
Built around some of the most electrifying scenes in Shakespearean tragedy, The Drama of Complaint examines Shakespeare's theatrical experiments with the poetic forms of complaint that were so prolific in early modern literature, showing how these conventional forms became crucibles for unconventional philosophical thought. Treating the literary field of complaint as a repertoire of stylized stock scenarios animated by conceptions of the good, this book argues that these microdramas of discontent and desire repeat across the period's literature as vehicles of ethical thought, and that Shakespeare's arrangements of these familiar scenes model and provoke new ways of thinking about ethical subjectivity and the good life. Drawing on early modern moral treatises and essays, Reformed theology, sermons, conduct manuals, and compendia of Aristotelian and Stoic moral philosophy alongside the period's literature, the book identifies and theorizes five particular poetic forms of complaint and develops new readings of Shakespearean tragedies to which each of these forms is integral. By constructing a taxonomy that privileges the recurrence of particular objects of desire (justice, mercy, an end to suffering) over the characterological traits of particular complainers, it brings into relief the habitual ways of conceptualizing the good that shape and are articulated in these poetic forms. In showing how early modern scenes of complaint are critical points of entry to literary inquiries into ethical questions, The Drama of Complaint illuminates the literary practices of early modern England while gesturing to the rich potential that has led thinkers from Boethius to Montaigne to Freud to imagine human (un)happiness by constructing or interpreting scenes of complaint |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Subject |
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Tragedies.
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| SUBJECT |
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 fast |
| Subject |
Complaint poetry, English -- History and criticism
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Ethics in literature.
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Complaint poetry, English
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Criticism and interpretation
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Literature: history & criticism.
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Literature.
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| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9780192694768 |
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0192694766 |
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9780191964527 |
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0191964522 |
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9780192694775 |
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0192694774 |
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