Disowning Knowledge: In Seven Plays of Shakespeare

by Stanley Cavell

Overview

Reissued with a new essay on Macbeth this famous collection of essays on Shakespeare's tragedies considers these plays as responses to the crisis of knowledge and the emergence of modern skepticism provoked by the new science of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107779150
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/31/2003
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

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Table of Contents

Preface and acknowledgements; Preface to the updated edition; 1. Introduction; 2. The avoidance of love: a reading of King Lear; 3. Othello and the stake of the other; 4. Coriolanus and interpretation of politics; 5. Hamlet's burden of proof; 6. Recounting gains, showing losses: reading The Winter's Tale; 7. Macbeth appalled; Index of names and titles.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Cavell's essays on Shakespeare—deep, intellectually tenacious, and humane meditations on the nature of artistic genius—are thrilling and essential reading. They illuminate the relation between skepticism and theater, transform the language of literary criticism, and heighten the ethical significance of aesthetic response." Stephen Greenblatt, Professor of Literature, University of California, Berkeley

"These beautiful essays on Shakespeare, lucid, complicated, and deeply moving, are unique in recent criticism for the conversation they forge between philosophy and literature. Unified by the twin themes of knowledge and acknowledgement...the volume brings together some of the most remarkable literary essays in modern scholarship. To his now famous readings of six plays of Shakespeare, Cavell now adds a stunning new piece on Macbeth, containing complicated meditations about gender, sexuality, and humanity." Martha Nussbaum

"These insightful essays, the first of which was writter in 1969, remain immediate and relevant...." Choice

Editorial Reviews

"Cavell's essays on Shakespeare—deep, intellectually tenacious, and humane meditations on the nature of artistic genius—are thrilling and essential reading. They illuminate the relation between skepticism and theater, transform the language of literary criticism, and heighten the ethical significance of aesthetic response." Stephen Greenblatt, Professor of Literature, University of California, Berkeley

"These beautiful essays on Shakespeare, lucid, complicated, and deeply moving, are unique in recent criticism for the conversation they forge between philosophy and literature. Unified by the twin themes of knowledge and acknowledgement...the volume brings together some of the most remarkable literary essays in modern scholarship. To his now famous readings of six plays of Shakespeare, Cavell now adds a stunning new piece on Macbeth, containing complicated meditations about gender, sexuality, and humanity." Martha Nussbaum

"These insightful essays, the first of which was writter in 1969, remain immediate and relevant...." Choice

From the Publisher