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Argues that the Essais of Montaigne were a crucial factor in the composition of later Shakespearean drama
In this revisionist study, Peter G. Platt provides a detailed history of the literary-critical interest in the Montaigne-Shakespeare connection from the eighteenth century to the present day. Through sustained close readings of Montaigne's essays and Shakespeare's plays, Platt explores both authors' approaches to self, knowledge and form that stress fractures, interruptions and alternatives. While the change in monarchy, the revived interest in judicial rhetoric and the alterations in Shakespeare's acting company helped shape plays such as Measure for Measure, King Lear and The Tempest, this book contends that Shakespeare's reading of Montaigne is an under-recognised driving force in these later plays.
Peter G. Platt is Ann Whitney Olin Professor and Chair of English at Barnard College.
List of contents
1. Introduction: "Were my mind settled, I would not essay but resolve myself"; 2. Chapter One: Knowing and Being in Montaigne and Shakespeare; 3. Chapter Two: "A Little Thing Doth Divert and Turn Us": Fictions, Mourning, and Playing in "Of Diverting or Diversion" and Hamlet; 4. Chapter Three: Mingled Yarns and Hybrid Worlds: "We Taste Nothing Purely," Measure for Measure, and All's Well That Ends Well; 5. Chapter Four: "We are Both Father and Mother together in this Generation": Physical and Intellectual Creations in "Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children" and King Lear; 6. Chapter Five: Custom, Otherness, and the Fictions of Mastery: "Of the Caniballes" and The Tempest; 7. Epilogue: Shakespeare before the Essays; Works Cited; Index.
About the author
Peter G. Platt is Ann Whitney Olin Professor and Chair of English at Barnard College. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Culture of Paradox and Reason Diminished: Shakespeare and the Marvelous, and the editor of Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture. He has written articles about Shakespeare, Renaissance poetics, and rhetoric. Shakespeare's Montaigne, an edition of selections from John Florio's 1603 translation of Montaigne's Essays, was co-edited with Stephen Greenblatt.
Summary
Through sustained close-readings of Montaigne's essays and Shakespeare's plays, Platt explores both authors' approaches to self, knowledge and form that stress fractures, interruptions and alternatives.
