Armed with a fresh analysis of Shakespeare's inherited resources for articulating anxieties rooted in philosophical doubt, Skulsky shows that in four plays--"Hamlet," "Measure for Measure," "King Lear," and "Othello"--the drama of doubt in search of an exit gives its own kind of urgency to the more familiar Shakespearean drama of action and motive.
From Skulsky's study, the four plays emerge as insidiously telling exercises in challenging our working faith in the objectivity of moral choice and the possibility of knowing other minds. In particular, Skulsky notes that Shakespeare takes...
Armed with a fresh analysis of Shakespeare's inherited resources for articulating anxieties rooted in philosophical doubt, Skulsky shows that in fo...
A searching contribution to the study of what gurative language is and how it works, this book is a guide to the sophisticated and powerful artistry of the seventeenth-century English poets who have come to be known by the misleading name of Metaphysicals. Harold Skulsky argues that Metaphorists is the more apt label. After exploring the dramatic and transactional theory of figurative language that these poets owe to the traditions they share, Skulsky gives close and carefully argued readings of their major poems. We watch metaphor being enacted rather than made in a high-stakes game of cue...
A searching contribution to the study of what gurative language is and how it works, this book is a guide to the sophisticated and powerful artistry o...
Fusing the methods of comparative literature, intellectual history, and philosophical analysis, Harold Skulsky explores a motif that has fascinated storytellers since antiquity: the miraculous transformation of a character into a plant, an animal, or a different human being.
The thesis of the study is that the fantasy of metamorphosis challenges the narrator and his audience to confront certain basic anxieties about the human condition: Is the mind reducible to physical properties? What constitutes personhood? How does physical form affect personal identity and continuity of the self?...
Fusing the methods of comparative literature, intellectual history, and philosophical analysis, Harold Skulsky explores a motif that has fascinate...
