The Shakespearean International Yearbook: Volume 15: Special Section, Shakespeare and the Human

by Tiffany Jo Werth, Tom Bishop, Alexa Huang, John Muccicolo, Graham Bradshaw

Overview

What makes Shakespeare centrally 'exceptional' to the current humanities curriculum, a measure and minimum unit for University administrations and the general public to recognise the activity of 'the humanities'? The contributing authors of essays in this issue of the Yearbook ask how we might push this question beyond familiar categories of the exceptional, the superlative, the above, beyond, below, or even the normative and familiar, in order to scale Shakespeare historically, canonically, and ontologically in relation to 'the human'. Each essay offers a case study devoted to Shakespeare's attentiveness to or implications for a specific location along the scala naturae -- from the wind of the coelum down to the stony lapis. Attending to locations such as these offers to displace 'the human' to a periphery, to but one among the jostling forces of life. Yet, as a centripetal figure of our culture, even of world culture, Shakespeare proves hard to displace, being engrained so deeply in our sense. Essays in the volume take up the challenge of evaluating Shakespeare’s intimate involvement with our understandings of what is or makes 'the human'.

In the now-established tradition of The Shakespearean International Yearbook, the 15th issue surveys important developments and topics of concern in contemporary Shakespeare studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472468505
Publisher:	Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Publication date:	10/28/2015
Series:	The Shakespearean International Yearbook
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Tom Bishop is based at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Alexa Huang is Professor of English at The George Washington University and Research Affiliate in Literature at MIT, USA. Tiffany Jo Werth is Associate Professor of English at Simon Fraser University, Canada.

Table of Contents

Contents: Preface; Introduction: Shakespeare and the Human, Tiffany Jo Werth; Airy spirits: winds, bodies, and ecological force in early modern England, Steve Mentz; Humans: exceptional humans, human exceptionalism, and the shape of things to come, Joseph Campana; Birds: Shakespeare’s tweets: a choir, Tom Bishop, Jean E. Howard, Gordan McMullan, and Vin Nardizzi; Hybrids: animal law and the Actaeon myth in Titus Andronicus, Miranda Garno Nesler; Fleece: the craziest transport: fleecing the non/human Merchant of Venice, Lowell Duckert; Bees: the Shakespearean hive and the virtues of honey, Nicole A. Jacobs; Plants: Shakespeare’s mulberry: eco-materialism and ‘living on’, Todd A. Borlick; Water: absorption, uncontainment, and Cleopatra’s barge, Ellen MacKay; Shells: Pericles and the fantasy of shell-dwelling, Shannon Kelley; Rocks: ‘sure and firm-set earth’: Shakespeare, stone, and structuration, Andrew Tumminia; Tail: ‘poore wretch … laid all naked on the bare earth’: human negative exceptionalism among the Humanists, Laurie Shannon; Index.