Books in the Edinburgh Critical Studies in Shakespeare and Philosophy series

Renews our understanding of Shakespeare through an interdisciplinary focus on hospitality In this critical analysis, Sophie E. Battell examines hospitality in Shakespeare's plays. By drawing on literary theory, modern philosophy and anthropology, as well as early modern scientific and religious texts, the book advances our understanding of Shakespeare as a dramatist concerned with the ethical questions at stake in encounters between guests and hosts of various kinds. The close readings and scholarly interventions presented here reconceive Shakespeare's plays in terms of a poetics of hospitality while arguing for an expansive, far-reaching vision of what it means to be open to the world and welcoming of others. Moving from the levels of subjectivity, the body and the senses to architecture, economics, legal discourse and the natural environment, On the Threshold not only makes important contributions to Shakespeare studies but forges new connections between Renaissance literary scholarship and contemporary debates on the politics of migrants and refugees. Sophie E. Battell is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Zurich.

Reconceptualises Shakespeare's representations of selfhood by drawing on a long history of the interpreting self We share with Shakespeare, it seems, the assumption that to be human is to know through interpretation. This innovative study examines Shakespeare's compelling dramatisations of the interpreting self through the lens of a hermeneutical tradition that spans culture-shaping early modern religious beliefs about human knowing and pivotal philosophical ideas of our age. What is it to be an interpreting self? Shakespeare, the Reformation and the Interpreting Self offers fresh perspectives on critical questions about the self's finitude, agency, motivations, self-knowledge and ethical relation to others; questions that were of great relevance in Shakespeare's England and which continue to frame present-day dilemmas and debates about human experience and human being. Roberta Kwan is an Honorary Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Media, Communication, Creative Arts, Language, and Literature at Macquarie University, Sydney.

Examines literary engagement with immateriality since the 'material turn' in early modern studiesProvides six case studies of works by Shakespeare, Donne, and Herbert, offering new readings of important literary texts of the English Renaissance alongside detailed chapters outlining attitudes towards immateriality in works of natural philosophy, medicine, and theologyEmploys an innovative organization around three major areas in which problem of immaterial was particularly pitched: Ontology, Theology, and Psychology (or Being, Believing, and Thinking)Includes wide-ranging references to early modern literary, philosophical, and theological textsDemonstrates how innovations in natural philosophy influenced thought about the natural world and how it was portrayed in literatureEngages with current early modern scholarship in the areas of material culture, cognitive literary studies, and phenomenologyImmateriality and Early Modern English Literature explores how early modern writers responded to rapidly shifting ideas about the interrelation of their natural and spiritual worlds. It provides six case studies of works by Shakespeare, Donne and Herbert, offering new readings of important literary texts of the English Renaissance alongside detailed chapters outlining attitudes towards immateriality in works of natural philosophy, medicine and theology. Building on the importance of addressing material culture in order to understand early modern literature, Knapp demonstrates how the literary imagination was shaped by changing attitudes toward the immaterial realm.

Thomas P. Anderson explores how the parameters of contemporary radical politics take shape in Coriolanus, King John, Henry V, Titus Andronicus, The Winter's Tale and Julius Caesar.