Full Description
This edited collection of essays analyses the contributions that presentist theory and criticism have made to the field of Shakespeare studies in recent years while simultaneously highlighting the contributions of Hugh Grady to that intellectual endeavour. The book is comprised of eleven core chapters authored by a mix of renowned Shakespeare scholars and early career scholars in a global context, complemented by a Foreword, an interview with Hugh Grady, and an Afterword.
Contents
Introduction.- In conversation with Hugh Grady.- Impure aesthetics.- Hugh Grady and Shakespeare's Impure Aesthetics.- In Troy There Lies the Present: The Presentism of Shakespearean Aesthetics.- Impure utopias.- Shakespeare's Impure Ethics: Love, Exile, and the Crisis of Moral Luck in As You Like It.-Psychological Utopia in The Taming of the Shrew.- Utopia in the here and now: On Bloch, Job and Lear.- Benjamin's Messianic Violence and Shakespeare's As You Like It.- Sexed and raced economies.- Love's Usury: Non-reproductive Sex and Auto-reproductive Money in John Donne.-The Rape of Lucrece in the Context of the European Migrant Crisis.- Presentist prospects.- Presentism Today: Dylan, Shakespeare, Rice and Bread.- 'The point is to change it' The Imperative for Activist Literary Studies.- Hugh Grady, Presentism, and Animal Studies.
