The human soul is for pre-modern philosophers the cause of both thinking and life. This double aspect of the soul, which makes man a rational animal, expresses itself above all in human action. Deadly Thought: "Hamlet" and the Human Soul traces Hamlet's famous inability to act to his inability to hold together these twin aspects of the soul. Combining careful attention to detail and interpretive breadth, noted scholar Jan H. Blits deftly illustrates how Hamlet collapses life into thought, and moral action into stage acting, and ultimately comes to see his own life as a stage play. Hamlet, the...

The Soul of Athens: Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" studies Shakespeare's portrayal of the founding of Athens through a close reading of one of the Bard's most memorable comedies. Coupling careful attention to detail with interpretive breadth, The Soul of Athens examines the nature of love, the natural doubleness of human thinking and the ambiguous relation of image and reality, as well as patriarchy and democracy, and heroic and moral virtue.

Spirit, Soul, and City offers a new reading of Coriolanus, Shakespeare's most political play and the last of his great tragedies. Portraying the founding of the Roman republic and the life and soul of its legendary warrior, Coriolanus, the play brings to light not only the hidden working of Rome's mixed regime but the inherent tragic tensions in the soul's spirited tendency to strive to go beyond itself in order to be true to itself. Distinguished scholar Jan H. Blits provides a fresh interpretation of this rich, complex, and often perplexing play, combining meticulous detail and insightful...

Patterned after his previous books on Shakespeare's plays, Jan H. Blits's New Heaven, New Earth is a scene-by-scene, line-by-line philosophical study of Antony and Cleopatra. Combining close attention to detail with interpretive breadth, Blits approaches Shakespeare as a first-rank thinker who, master of his own thought and writing, produced plays and poetry with an infinitely conscious art, like any commonly recognized philosophical poet. Treating the play as a fully coherent whole, Blits shows that Antony and Cleopatra, as much a history play as a love story, depicts the transition from the...

While recent criticism of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar has stressed the corruption of both the common people and the Republic's enemies within the patrician class, this book argues that at the core of the play lies the less obvious but more important corruption of the regime's leading defenders, particularly Brutus.

Turning, Telling Moments in the Classical Political World examines developments in the classical political world which are both turning and telling moments. All the moments--from Theseus's founding of Athens to Augustus's establishment of the Principate--possess the double character of being turning points and revealing fundamental aspects of the ancient political world. While most books on ancient history are chiefly concerned with questions of literary sources and historical accuracy, this book deals with the significance of the facts and reports themselves. Blits treats the ancient...

The essays in this book examine the political activities and institutions of pre-Imperial Rome in conjunction with the habits of the hearts and the minds of the Romans. Relying on the writings of ancient authors, the essays analyze significant political developments and events. They attempt to draw out the meaning of what the authors say and impose no theory on the ancient writings. Nor do they pursue the methodological techniques of contemporary historiography. While avoiding such common present-day anachronisms, they take their guidance directly from the ancient historians themselves and...

This book is a thorough examination and fresh interpretation of Shakespeare's presentation of the final throes of republican Rome's decay and demise and the rise of Caesarism. Speech by speech and line by line, it brings out Shakespeare's understanding of the political substance and the historical significance of republican Rome's collapse.