Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Series Editor’s Preface
- Introduction
- PART I MOTION
- Introduction: The Physics and Metaphysics of Metaphor
- 1 The Erotic Potential of Idleness in Lyly’s Drama
- 2 The ‘Raging Motions’ of Eros on Shakespeare’s Stage
- PART II SPACE
- Introduction: In Love
- 3 ‘A petty world of myself ’: Intimacy and Erotic Distance in Endymion
- 4 Binding the Void: The Erotics of Place in Antony and Cleopatra
- PART III CREATIVITY
- Introduction: Erotic Subject, Object, Instrument
- 5 ‘Love’s Use’ in Campaspe
- 6 ‘You lie, in faith’: Making Marriage in The Taming of the Shrew
- Conclusion: Metaphorical Constraints: Making ‘frenzy . . . Fine’
- Bibliography
- Index
Series Editor’s Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 October 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Series Editor’s Preface
- Introduction
- PART I MOTION
- Introduction: The Physics and Metaphysics of Metaphor
- 1 The Erotic Potential of Idleness in Lyly’s Drama
- 2 The ‘Raging Motions’ of Eros on Shakespeare’s Stage
- PART II SPACE
- Introduction: In Love
- 3 ‘A petty world of myself ’: Intimacy and Erotic Distance in Endymion
- 4 Binding the Void: The Erotics of Place in Antony and Cleopatra
- PART III CREATIVITY
- Introduction: Erotic Subject, Object, Instrument
- 5 ‘Love’s Use’ in Campaspe
- 6 ‘You lie, in faith’: Making Marriage in The Taming of the Shrew
- Conclusion: Metaphorical Constraints: Making ‘frenzy . . . Fine’
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Picture Macbeth alone on stage, staring intently into empty space. ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me?’ he asks, grasping decisively at the air. On one hand, this is a quintessentially theatrical question. At once an object and a vector, the dagger describes the possibility of knowledge (‘Is this a dagger’) in specifically visual and spatial terms (‘which I see before me’). At the same time, Macbeth is posing a quintessentially philosophical question, one that assumes knowledge to be both conditional and experiential, and that probes the relationship between certainty and perception, as well as intention and action. It is from this shared ground of art and enquiry, of theatre and theory, that this series advances its basic premise: Shakespeare is philosophical.
It seems like a simple enough claim. But what does it mean exactly, beyond the parameters of this specific moment in Macbeth? Does it mean that Shakespeare had something we could think of as his own philosophy? Does it mean that he was influenced by particular philosophical schools, texts and thinkers? Does it mean, conversely, that modern philosophers have been influenced by him, that Shakespeare's plays and poems have been, and continue to be, resources for philosophical thought and speculation?
The answer is yes all around. These are all useful ways of conceiving a philosophical Shakespeare and all point to lines of enquiry that this series welcomes. But Shakespeare is philosophical in a much more fundamental way as well. Shakespeare is philosophical because the plays and poems actively create new worlds of knowledge and new scenes of ethical encounter. They ask big questions, make bold arguments and develop new vocabularies in order to think what might otherwise be unthinkable. Through both their scenarios and their imagery, the plays and poems engage the qualities of consciousness, the consequences of human action, the phenomenology of motive and attention, the conditions of personhood and the relationship among different orders of reality and experience. This is writing and dramaturgy, moreover, that consistently experiments with a broad range of conceptual crossings, between love and subjectivity, nature and politics, and temporality and form.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Conceiving Desire in Lyly and ShakespeareMetaphor, Cognition and Eros, pp. x - xiiPublisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2020