Shakespeare and Montaigne
Patrick Gray editor William M Hamlin editor Lars Engle editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Edinburgh University Press
Published:30th Apr '21
Should be back in stock very soon
Shakespeare and Montaigne share a grounded, genial sense of the lived reality of human experience, as well as a surprising depth of engagement with history, literature and philosophy. With celebrated subtlety and incisive humour, both authors investigate abiding questions of epistemology, psychology, theology, ethics, politics and aesthetics. In this collection, distinguished contributors consider these influential, much-beloved figures in light of each other. The English playwright and the French essayist, each in his own fashion, reflect on and evaluate the Renaissance, the Reformation and the rise of new modern perspectives many of us now might readily recognise as our own.
Describing books as ‘this world’s theatre’, Montaigne admitted his curiosity to read and thereby ‘discover and know the mind of my authors’. This book’s dynamic discoveries about the shared literary, historical and psychological sympathies of Shakespeare and Montaigne illuminates the mind and work of both. It is a field-changing collection. -- Emma Smith, University of Oxford
Among the qualities that characterize the achievement of Montaigne and Shakespeare is the capacity over many centuries to arouse not merely interest but love, a love often deepening across the course of an entire lifetime. Despite their differences – the one a French nobleman, the other the son of an English glover, the one a famously personal essayist, the other a famously impersonal playwright– many readers, loving them both, have sensed a profound affinity between them. In exploring and testing the grounds of this affinity, this exemplary collection of essays finds new, often surprising ways to enrich our understanding of their individual talents and their shared gifts. -- Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard University
ISBN: 9781474458238
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
468 pages