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'Shakespeare's Moral Compass is an exemplar of what scholarship in the humanities should be - illuminating the human condition while drawing from multiple disciplines.'
Jonathan Haidt, New York University Stern School of Business, and author of The Righteous Mind
Overturns orthodox thinking about morality in Shakespeare's plays by updating our understanding of the human mind
This ground-breaking study fearlessly combines latest research in evolutionary psychology, historical scholarship and philosophy to answer a question that has eluded critics for centuries: what is Shakespeare's moral vision? At a political and cultural moment in which many of us are taking stock and looking for meaning, and in which moral outrage and polarisation seem endemic, this book radically reimagines how we might approach great works of literature to find some answers.
Neema Parvini is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Surrey.
Cover image: King Lear by Seward Johnson at Grounds for Sculpture © Kelleher Photography / Shutterstock.com
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edinburghuniversitypress.com
ISBN 978-1-4744-3287-0
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List of contents
Acknowledgements; Part 1: Conflicting Moral Visions; 1. Navigating Shakespeare's Moral Compass; 2. The Constrained Vision of Evolutionary Ethics; 3. Moral Philosophy in England during the Time of Shakespeare; 4. The Reformation, Capitalism and Ethics in England during the 1590s and early 1600s; Part 2: Shakespeare's Moral Compass; 5. Past Reflections on Shakespeare and Morality; 6. Authority; 7. Loyalty; 8. Fairness; 9. Sanctity; 10. Care; 11. Liberty; Bibliography; Index.
About the author
Neema Parvini is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Surrey. His previous books include
Shakespeare's History Plays (EUP, 2012),
Shakespeare and Contemporary Theory (Bloomsbury, 2012),
Shakespeare and Cognition (Palgrave, 2015) and
Shakespeare and New Historicist Theory (Bloomsbury, 2017).
Summary
This ground-breaking study fearlessly combines latest research in evolutionary psychology, historical scholarship and philosophy to answer a question that has eluded critics for centuries: what is Shakespeare's moral vision?
