Shakespeare and the Truth-Teller: Confronting the Cynic Ideal

Shakespeare's Responses to Cynic Critical Activity explores Shakespeares responses to sixteenth-century debates over the revolutionary potential of Cynic critical activity, highlighting the necessity of literary thinking to political philosophy. It offers new ways of thinking about modernitys engagement with classical models and literatures engagement with politics.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 264 pages
Publication date: 31 August 2021
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

The early modern reception of classical Cynicism and the rise of literary realism are examined in this book, which promotes a new understanding of the intersection between literary character and ethical character, particularly with respect to literature's role in facilitating belief in the revolutionary potential of individual critical agency. The reception history of Diogenes the Cynic is used as a methodological point of contact between historicist and presentist approaches to Shakespeare, drawing new interdisciplinary connections between Shakespeare studies, literary theory, critical theory, and political philosophy. Novel readings of King Lear, Hamlet, and Timon of Athens, as well as other early modern texts, and major works of modern philosophy and political theory are included. Highlighting the necessity of literary thinking to political philosophy, this book explores Shakespeare's responses to sixteenth-century debates over the revolutionary potential of Cynic critical activity, which persist in later centuries and inform major developments in Western intellectual history. Hershinow presents new ways of thinking about modernity's engagement with classical models and literature's engagement with politics.

Weight: 406g
Dimension: 153 x 233 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781474439589