Shakespeare and Emotion

These twenty-three new essays by an international team of experts will be essential reading for students and scholars working on Shakespeare, the history of the body and emotions, and performance theory or practice. It brings the current surge of interest in affective life into conversation with current debates in Shakespeare studies.

Shakespeare and Emotion devotes sustained attention to the emotions as a novel way of exploring Shakespeare''s works in their original contexts. A variety of disciplinary approaches drawn from literary, theatrical, historical, cultural and film studies brings the recent upsurge of interest in affect into conversation with some of the most urgent debates in Shakespeare studies. The volume provides both a comprehensive account of the current state of scholarship and a speculative forum for new research. Its chapters outline some important contexts for understanding Shakespeare''s creativity through an emotional lens – from religion, rhetoric, and medicine, to language, acting and Bollywood – and offer a range of case studies which reveal particular emotions at work. Considering emotional and passionate experience as an animating and sometimes alienating force within the plays and poems, the volume highlights the continuing importance of Shakespeare today: for our sense of who we are and who we might become.