Full Description
In this critical analysis, Sophie E. Battell examines hospitality in Shakespeare's plays. By drawing on literary theory, modern philosophy, and anthropology as well as early modern scientific and religious texts, the book advances our understanding of Shakespeare as a dramatist concerned with the ethical questions at stake in encounters between guests and hosts of various kinds.
The close readings and scholarly interventions presented here reconceive the plays in terms of a poetics of hospitality while arguing for an expansive, far-reaching vision of what it means to be open to the world and welcoming of others. Moving from the levels of subjectivity, the body, and the senses to architecture, economics, legal discourse, and the natural environment, On the Threshold not only makes important contributions to Shakespeare studies but forges new connections between Renaissance literary scholarship and contemporary debates on the politics of migrants and refugees.
Contents
Series Editors' Preface
Introduction
Hospitality and the Supernatural in The Comedy of Errors
Cosmopolitan Soundscapes in The Merchant of Venice
Troilus and Cressida: Militarised Encounters
Timon of Athens and Parasitology
Secretive Hosts in Pericles
Afterword
BibliographyIndex
