Cartesian Theaters, Shakespearean Minds : Finding Descartes on the Early Modern Stage (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Shakespeare and Philosophy)

Pensky, Nathan

Edinburgh University Press（2026/03発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 312 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781399556965

Full Description

Most scholars of early modern English literature consider Cartesian rationalism to be a poor theoretical lens. Though René Descartes figures as one of the most important philosophers in the early modern period, and in the history of philosophy itself, he has received scorn from literary scholars of the Renaissance who have become skeptical of "heroes of subjectivity." Cartesian Theaters, Shakespearean Minds challenges the commonplace dichotomy between Cartesian subjectivity and early modern material culture and reconsiders Descartes as a foundational figure in early modern literary studies. It corrects outdated readings by scholars that would position him as a champion of disembodied mind. Instead, Nathan Pensky argues that both Descartes and Shakespeare, as well as several of the latter's contemporaries, draw from overlapping philosophical histories, and that the mind-body problem as evident in early modern drama clearly anticipates Cartesian thought.

Contents

Acknowledgments
Series Editor's Preface

Introduction: Exorcising the Ghost in the Machine
1. Devilish Entertainment and Divine Thoughts in Doctor Faustus
2. Mind, Intension, and Wordplay in Endymion and Love's Labour's Lost
3. Hal as Cartesian Anti-Hero in Shakespeare's Henriad
4. The Phenomenology of Revenge in The Spanish Tragedy
5. Imagining Descartes in Hamlet and Othello
Coda: Narrative at the Intersection of Being and Seeming

Bibliography
Index