Shakespeare in Theory and PracticeTheory is valuable to the degree that it enables us to read differently: a nuanced approach shows that the most obvious interpretation is never the whole story. In these essays, brought together here for the first time, world-renowned critic Catherine Belsey puts theory to work in order to register Shakespeare's powers of seduction, together with his moment in history. Teasing out the meanings of the narrative poems, as well as some of the more familiar plays, Shakespeare in Theory and Practice demonstrates the possibilities of an attention to textuality that also draws on the archive. A reading of the Sonnets, written specially for this book, analyses their intricate and ambivalent inscription of desire.Belsey has been intimately involved with poststructuralism as it has emerged and developed in the English-speaking world. While the earliest essays published here are strongly influenced by Roland Barthes and Louis Althusser, both writers acknowledged a debt to the psychoanalytic account of representation as always unstable, designed at once to reveal and to repress, and Belsey's later work has come to owe more to Lacanian psychoanalysis, in addition to Derridean deconstruction. Between them, these essays trace the progress of theory in the course of three decades, while a new introduction offers a narrative and analytical overview, from a participant's perspective, of some of its key implications.Written with verve and conviction, this book shows how texts can be seen to offer access to the dissonances of the past when theory finds an outcome in practice.Key Features*A very special critic writing on the central figure of English literature*Provides an exemplary demonstration of poststructuralist theory at work*Pays particular attention to desire as a theme and as a component of interpretation*Provides close readings of the texts combining the historical and theoretical |
Contents
Taxonomies of Desire in Venus | 34 |
Expropriation and Consent | 54 |
Antinomies of Desire and the Sonnets | 73 |
Copyright | |
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appears argues argument audience Augustine Augustine's Bolingbroke Cambridge Claudius cogito conscience course critical dark woman death defines Derrida difference dream Écrits Elizabethan English essay Essayes essayists Florio Foucault Freud Gaunt genre Hamlet hath Henry hero heroic Horestes human Iago Iago's inscription instance interpretation Jacques Derrida Jacques Lacan Jean-François Lyotard judgement king Lacanian language London love and lust lovers Lucrece Lucrece's Madness Madness and Civilization marriage meaning Meanwhile Montaigne Montaigne's moral plays narrative Othello Ovid passion perhaps Perkins Peter Quince's ballad phallus pleasure poem poet poetry political possession Postmodern Condition present prince psychoanalysis question Quince's rape Rape of Lucrece reading Renaissance revenge Richard seems sense sexual Shakespeare's Sonnets signifier slave sonnet 18 sonnet 20 speech story symbolic order Tarquin tell textual thee theory thing thou tion tradition trans trompe-l'oeil truth unconscious University Press Venus and Adonis William words Wrath