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This collection of essays aims to explore fundamental questions about God, human nature, and political life through careful readings of the Greek poets, the Hebrew Bible, and Shakespeare. The volume investigates the abiding tension between the Hebraic and the Hellenic dimensions of the Western soul through an examination of profound literary, philosophic, and theological reflections on topics as various as friendship, marriage, tyranny, sovereignty, sin, forgiveness, comedy, tragedy, and contemplation. Offered in honor of Mera J. Flaumenhaft, the essays reflect the intellectual rigor, moral seriousness, and disciplined imagination of her scholarship and teaching.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Professor or Friend? On the Intention and Manner of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, by Leon R. Kass
Chapter 2: Schiller's "Wily Odysseus"-A Poetic Hint-, by Gisela Berns
Chapter 3: Recognizing Odysseus: The Role of Signs in Odyssey 19-23, by Margaret Kirby
Chapter 4: Logos and Voice in Sophocles' Ajax, by Arlene Saxonhouse
Chapter 5: Civic Friendship in the Philoctetes, by Paul Ludwig
Chapter 6. Defeat into Victory: The Strategy of Odysseus in Sophocles' Ajax and Philoctetes, by Adam Schulman
Chapter 7: Pindar's Wisdom: Terror at the Edge, Victory Joy at the Center, by William Mullen
Chapter 8. Lady Macbeth: The Tyrant's Wife, by Eva Brann
Chapter 9. Guarding the Salt-Water Girdle: Lovers and Kings in Cymbeline, by Kate Havard
Chapter 10: Falstaff Riseth Up, by Louis Petrich
Chapter 11. What Makes a Kingdom? Plants, Poetry, and Politics in Richard II, by Paul Wilford
Chapter 12: Reason in Madness, or Madness in Reason? On the Political Interstices of King Lear, by Jeff Smith
Chapter 13: Antony and Cleopatra: Antony's Return to Egypt, by Pamela Kraus
Chapter 14. Philosophy (and Athens) in Decay: Timon of Athens, by Jan H. Blits
Chapter 15: Woman and Nature: The Female Drama in the Book of Genesis, by Ronna Burger
Chapter 16. The Life and Death of Aaron the Priest, by Robert Sacks
Chapter 17. Beyond Sighing and Swooning: Love in the Book of Ruth, by Alan Rubenstein
Chapter 18: Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Hebraic Strain of American Thought, by Wilfred McClay
About the author
Paul T. Wilford is assistant professor of political science at Boston College.
Kate Havard is a writer, research analyst, and theater critic in Washington, D.C.
Summary
Through careful interpretative essays on Greek poets, Shakespeare, and the Hebrew Bible, Athens, Arden, Jerusalem explores fundamental questions about God, human nature, and the political order. The collection of essays addresses topics ranging from friendship and marriage to sovereignty and tyranny, from piety and sin to comedy and contemplation.
