Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Shakespeare's Dialectic of Hope
  • Cited by 2
      • Show more authors
      • You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Select format
    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      June 2022
      May 2022
      ISBN:
      9781009106986
      9781009098090
      9781009107754
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009106986
      Dimensions:
      (229 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.524kg, 258 Pages
      Dimensions:
      (229 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.378kg, 258 Pages
      • Subjects:
      Literature, Renaissance and Early Modern Literature
    You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Selected: Digital
    Add to cart View cart Buy from Cambridge.org
    Subjects:
    Literature, Renaissance and Early Modern Literature
    Information

    Book description

    Closely examining the relationship between the political and the utopian in five major plays from different phases of Shakespeare's career, Hugh Grady shows the dialectical link between the earlier political dramas and the late plays or tragicomedies. Reading Julius Caesar and Macbeth from the tragic period alongside The Winter's Tale and Tempest from the utopian end of Shakespeare's career, with Antony and Cleopatra acting as a transition, Grady reveals how, in the late plays, Shakespeare introduces a transformative element of hope while never losing a sharp awareness of suffering and death. The plays presciently confront dilemmas of an emerging modernity, diagnosing and indicting instrumental politics and capitalism as largely disastrous developments leading to an empty world devoid of meaning and community. Grady persuasively argues that the utopian vision is a specific dialectical response to these fears and a necessity in worlds of injustice, madness and death.

    Reviews

    ‘In this stunningly lucid, philosophically astute, and endlessly revealing study, Hugh Grady enlists the utopian and the aesthetic as necessary correctives to any reductively political reading of Shakespeare. This book should be required reading for anyone interested in the evolving meanings of Shakespeare's plays and the legacies of political criticism.'

    Julia Reinhard Lupton - The University of California, Irvine

    Refine List

    Actions for selected content:

    Select all | Deselect all
    • View selected items
    • Export citations
    • Download PDF (zip)
    • Save to Kindle
    • Save to Dropbox
    • Save to Google Drive

    Save Search

    You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

    Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
    Cancel
    ×

    Contents

    Contents
    References

    Metrics

    Altmetric attention score

    Full text views

    Total number of HTML views: 0
    Total number of PDF views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    Book summary page views

    Total views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    * Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

    Usage data cannot currently be displayed.

    Accessibility standard: Unknown

    Why this information is here

    This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.

    Accessibility Information

    Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.