Title Shakespearean genealogies of power : a whispering of nothing in Hamlet, Richard II, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, the merchant of Venice, and the winter's tale / Anselm Haverkamp

Published New York : Routledge, 2011

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Description 1 online resource (x, 176 pages) Series Discourses of law Discourses of law. Contents Introduction -- Perpetuum mobile: Shakespeare's perpetual Renaissance -- The ghost of history: Hamlet's politics of paternity -- Lethe's wharf: wild justice, the purgatorial supplement -- Richard II, Bracton, and the end of political theology -- The death of a shifter: Jupiterian history in Julius Caesar -- The future of violence: Macbeth and Machiavelli -- The whispering of nothing: The winter's tale -- But mercy is above: Shylock's pun of a pound -- Habeas corpus: the law's desire to have the body Summary This text proposes a new view on Shakespeare's involvement with the legal sphere: as a visible space between the spheres of politics and law and well able to negotiate legal and political, even constitutional concerns, Shakespeare's theater opened up a new perspective on normativity. His plays reflect, even create, "history" in a new sense on the premises of the older conceptions of historical and legal exemplarity: examples, cases, and instances are to be reflected rather than treated as straightforwardly didactic or salvific. Thus, what comes to be recognized, reflected and acknowledged has a disowning, alienating effect, whose enduring aftermath rather than its theatrical immediacy counts and remains effective. In Shakespeare, the law gets hold of its normativity as the problematic efficacy of unsolved or rarely ever completely solved problems: on the stage of the theatre, the law has to cope with a mortgage of history rather than with its own success story. The exemplary interplay of critical, cultural and legal theory in the twentieth century between Carl Schmitt and Hans Kelsen, Walter Benjamin and Ernst Kantorowicz, Hans Blumenberg and Giorgio Agamben, Robert Cover and Niklas Luhmann-found its speculative instruments in Shakespeare's plays Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Knowledge -- Law Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Knowledge -- History Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Political and social views. SUBJECT Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 fast Subject Law in literature. Politics in literature. Law -- Political aspects. Power (Social sciences) in literature. LITERARY CRITICISM -- Shakespeare. DRAMA -- Shakespeare. History Law Law in literature Law -- Political aspects Political and social views Politics in literature Power (Social sciences) in literature Form Electronic book ISBN 9780203840283 0203840283

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