Generosity and the Limits of Authority: Shakespeare, Herbert, MiltonGenerosity is an ambiguous quality, William Flesch observes; while receiving gifts is pleasant, gift-giving both displays the wealth and strength of the giver and places the receiver under an obligation. In provocative new readings of Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton, Flesch illuminates the personal authority that is bound inextricably with acts of generosity. Drawing on the work of such theorists as Mauss, Blanchot, Bourdieu, Wittgenstein, Bloom, Cavell, and Greenblatt, Flesch maintains that the literary power of Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton is at its most intense when they are exploring the limits of generosity. He considers how in Herbert's Temple divine assurance of the possibility of redemption is put into question and how the poet approaches such a gift with the ambivalence of a beneficiary. In his readings of Shakespeare's Richard II, Henry IV, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, and the sonnets, Flesch examines the perspective of the benefactor--including Shakespeare himself--who confronts the decline of his capacity to give. Turning to Milton's Paradise Lost, Flesch identifies two opposing ways of understanding generosity--Satan's, on the one hand, and Adam and Eve's, on the other - and elaborates the different conceptions of poetry to which these understandings give rise. Scholars of Shakespeare and of Renaissance culture, Miltonists, literary theorists, and others interested in the relationship between philosophy and literature will want to read this insightful and challenging book. |
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... feel this pain . Resignation ceases being the detachment of a separate and sovereign ego . It becomes instead the ... feeling , an inner experience ; and I remember it . — And now remember quite pre- cisely ! Then the ' inner experience ...
... feel this obligation ; not to feel it is to be an ingrate : So will fall Hee and his faithless Progeny : whose fault ? Whose but his own ? ingrate , he had of mee All he could have ; I made him just and right , Sufficient to have stood ...
... feel what wretches feel , That thou mayst shake the superflux to them , And show the heavens more just . ( III.iv.24-36 ) The storm might seem here to be the worst , but the speech de- scribes its terror as less than the " things would ...
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Generosity and the Limits of Authority: Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton William Flesch Limited preview - 2018 |
Generosity and the Limits of Authority: Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton William Flesch Limited preview - 2018 |