In Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare's image of "an universal wolf" of appetite, power, and will represented and critiqued the emerging systems of modernity: mercantile capitalism, Machiavellian politics, and value-free rationality. Rereading Troilus, Othello, King Lear, and As You Like It, Grady finds many parallels between Shakespeare's criticism and that of such critics as Marx, Horkheimer, Adorno, and Foucault, among others. In particular, Grady points to Shakespeare's keen interest in the twentieth-century concept of "reification," where social systems spin out of control, operating...

Every epoch recreates its classical icons--and for literary culture no icon is more central or more protean than Shakespeare. Even though finding the authentic Shakespeare has been a goal of scholarship since the eighteenth century, he has always been constructed as a contemporary author. In this critical study, Grady charts the construction of Shakespeare as a twentieth-century text, redirecting "new historicist" methods to an investigation of the social roots of contemporary Shakespeare criticism. Beginning with the formation of professionalism as an ideology in the Victorian Age, this...

The four plays of Shakespeare's Henriad and the slightly later Hamlet brilliantly explore interconnections between political power and interior subjectivity as productions of the newly emerging constellation we call modernity. Hugh Grady argues that for Shakespeare subjectivity was a critical, negative mode of resistance to power--not, as many recent critics have asserted, its abettor.

Shakespeare has variously been seen as the last great exponent of pre-modern Western culture, a crucial inaugurator of modernity and a prophet of postmodernity. This collection of essays traces the changing reception of Shakespeare over the past 400 years. Along the way it provides insights into: the nature of individuality, identity, and the self; the inter-relations of the rise of capitalism, nation-states, and secular culture; the sexual division of labour and gender identity; and the beginnings of Western colonialism, racism, and anti-Semitism. This examination of Shakespeare's plays...

This fascinating collection traces the ways in which Shakespeare has been reassessed over the years and explores many issues concerning Shakespeare's modernity.

Presentist Shakespeares is the first extended study of the principles and practice of 'presentism', a critical movement that takes account of the never-ending dialogue between past and present.

In this bold and consistently thought-provoking collection of presentist readings, the contributors:

• argue that the ironies generated by our involvement in time are a fruitful, necessary and an unavoidable aspect of any text's being, and that presentism allows us to engage with them more fully and productively
• demonstrate how these ironies can function as...

Presentist Shakespeares is the first extended study of the principles and practice of 'presentism', a critical movement that takes account of the never-ending dialogue between past and present.

In this bold and consistently thought-provoking collection of presentist readings, the contributors:

• argue that the ironies generated by our involvement in time are a fruitful, necessary and an unavoidable aspect of any text's being, and that presentism allows us to engage with them more fully and productively
• demonstrate how these ironies can function as...

Shakespeare and Impure Aesthetics explores ideas about art implicit in Shakespeare's plays and defines specific Shakespearean aesthetic practices in his use of desire, death and mourning as resources for art. Hugh Grady draws on a tradition of aesthetic theorists who understand art as always formed in a specific historical moment but as also distanced from its context through its form and Utopian projections. Grady sees A Midsummer Night's Dream, Timon of Athens, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet as displaying these qualities, showing aesthetic theory's usefulness for close readings of the plays....

Shakespeare and Impure Aesthetics explores ideas about art implicit in Shakespeare's plays and defines specific Shakespearean aesthetic practices in his use of desire, death and mourning as resources for art. Hugh Grady draws on a tradition of aesthetic theorists who understand art as always formed in a specific historical moment but as also distanced from its context through its form and Utopian projections. Grady sees A Midsummer Night's Dream, Timon of Athens, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet as displaying these qualities, showing aesthetic theory's usefulness for close readings of the plays....

Provides a new appreciation of John Donne through the lens of Walter Benjamin's critical theory of baroque allegory.