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[headline]Explores the scope, power, and diverse performances of virtue in Shakespeare's drama This collection of essays examines how Shakespearean drama enacts ancient virtues and conceptualises new ones in complex fictional scenarios that test virtues for their continuing value. Contributors approach the virtues as a source of imaginative, affective and intellectual nourishment. Examining Shakespeare's virtuous theatre in tragic, comic and romance modes and from ethical, theatrical and political perspectives, this volume establishes virtue as a framework for a socially, environmentally and spiritually renewed literary criticism. Contributors balance historical depth and philosophical insight with the art of close reading as they contemplate the dynamic field of virtue - embodied, responsive, energetic and dynamic - as it ebbs and flows across time, among multiple wisdom traditions, and in the entangled lives and troubled circumstances of Shakespeare's characters. [author bios]Kent Lehnhof is Professor of English at Chapman University. Julia Reinhard Lupton is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. Carolyn Sale is Associate Professor of English at the University of Alberta.
About the author
Kent Lehnhof is professor of English at Chapman University. He is author of some two dozen articles on early modern literature and culture and is co-editor (along with Moshe Gold and Sandor Goodhart) of the essay collection
Of Levinas and Shakespeare: "To See Another Thus" (2018). His articles have appeared in such journals as
Shakespeare Quarterly,
Renaissance Drama,
English Literary Renaissance,
ELH,
SEL,
Modern Philology, and
Criticism. He is currently working on a book-length study of vocality and ethics in Shakespeare's late plays. Julia Reinhard Lupton is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author or co-author of five books, including
Shakespeare Dwelling: Designs for the Theater of Life (2018),
Thinking with Shakespeare (2015), and
Citizen-Saints (2012). She has edited or co-edited many volumes and special issues, including
Shakespeare and Virtue: A Handbook (with Donovan Sherman), and
Shakespeare's Virtuous Theatre: Power, Capacity, and the Good (with Kent Lehnhof and Carolyn Sale),
Shakespeare and Hospitality (with David Goldstein), and
Face to Face with Shakespeare (with Matthew Smith). She is a former Guggenheim Fellow and a former Trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America. Carolyn Sale is associate professor of English at the University of Alberta. Her work has appeared in journals including
ELH,
Renaissance Drama, and
Shakespeare Quarterly, as well as various essay collections including
The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy (2018),
The Oxford Handbook of English Law and Literature, 1500-1700 (2017),
Shakespeare and Judgment (2016),
The History of British Women's Writing, Volume 1, 1500-1610 (2010), and
The Law in Shakespeare (2007). She is completing the book manuscript 'The Literary Commons: The Common Law and the Writer in Early Modern England, 1528-1628'. Earlier work in the phenomenology of Shakespeare's theatre includes "Eating Air, Feeling Smells: Hamlet's Theory of Performance," reprinted in
Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations: Hamlet (2009).
Summary
Presents Shakespeare's theatre as a powerful forum for shaping our capacity for virtue
