Disowning Knowledge: In Seven Plays of Shakespeare - Hardcover

Cavell, Stanley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521821894 ISBN 13: 9780521821896

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2003

Synopsis

Reissued with a new preface and a new essay on Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Coriolanius, Hamlet and The Winter's Tale, this famous collection of essays on Shakespeare's tragedies considers the plays as responses to the crisis of knowledge and the emergence of modern skepticism.

About this title

Book Description:

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 16th and early 17th centuries.

Review:

"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

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0521821894
• ISBN 13: 9780521821896
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 272