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Literary Criticism Shakespeare

Searching Shakespeare

Studies in Culture and Authority

by (author) Derek Cohen

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Nov 2003
Category
Shakespeare, Drama, English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780802087782
    Publish Date
    Dec 2003
    List Price
    $84.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442679689
    Publish Date
    Nov 2003
    List Price
    $84.00

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Description

Original in topic and approach, Searching Shakespeare presents a political-historical exploration of Shakespeare's drama, examining the plays in the context of current ideological concerns – history, memory, marginality, and nationalism. Derek Cohen predicates his argument on the supposition that the individual, as much as the encompassing state, is subject to the shaping forces and machinery of the ideological surround.

Shakespeare's plays, Cohen argues, consistently portray the clash between the passionate search for individuality and the quest for social harmony as irresolvable. The playwright's uncanny ability to carry the reader to the edge of imaginary experience – far from the literal world that is made visible by the text – offers an entry into the subtextual and ironic underside of the dramas. It is in this dark and strange world of slavery, mutilation, sexual jealousy, and suborned murder that the implicit political biases of the plays are most evident and it is here, too, that a modern political analysis reveals why Shakespeare portrayed the quest for individuation and self-expression as necessarily ending in tragedy.

About the author

Derek Cohen is a professor of English at York University.

Derek Cohen's profile page