Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time

Kastan, David Scott

doi:10.1007/978-1-349-06145-7

Cited by 79 publications

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“…. a concept realized by mental action," see Kastan (1982). Although Kastan leaves Augustine's clear debt to Aristotle unmentioned here, he nonetheless helpfully recalls the theologian's conception of time as dependent upon a kind of mental "extension" by which "movement is measured" (10-11).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Aristotelian Time, Ethics, and the Art of Persuasion in Shakespeare’s Henry V

Crosbie

2023

Literature

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In his response to the Dauphin, his threats before Harfleur’s walls, and his St. Crispin’s Day oration, Henry V deploys what we might call proleptic histories of the present as a means of rhetorical persuasion. Henry invites his audiences, that is, to imagine themselves in the future, understanding the present as part of their own history. Henry’s invocation of an imagined future that understands the present as a theoretical past betrays a surprising indebtedness to Aristotle’s notion of time as “a measure of change with respect to the before and after.” Drawing on Aristotle’s theory that time depends upon a perceiving mind and that those unconscious of change mistakenly “join up the latter ‘now’ to the former and make it one,” this essay argues that Henry succeeds in altering his auditors’ behavior, and thus generating the history he desires, by merging their shared, lived present with his own fictive temporalities. A mode of persuasion famous in its ethical ambivalence, Henry’s rhetoric reveals how the very ontological assumptions governing perceptions of time may be manipulated, for good or ill, amid audiences who fail to critically envisage their own counterbalancing, imaginative histories.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Aristotelian Time, Ethics, and the Art of Persuasion in Shakespeare’s Henry V

Crosbie

2023

Literature

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“…Using dramatic genre to categorise Shakespeare's negotiation of time is something that David Kastan returns to nearly 20 years after the publication of Toliver's article. In his book‐length study, Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time , Kastan outlines: the time of the histories, which are “linear and open”; the time of the tragedies, which are “linear and terrifyingly closed”; and the time of the romances, which are linear and decisively, yet somewhat ambiguously, concluded by “pregnant moments” (26, 31).…”

Section: Schemes and Themes: Shakespeare And Time With A Capital ‘T’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Shakespeare, Time, Theory

Lewis

2014

Literature Compass

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This article charts the range of ways in which literary scholars from the 1960s to the present day have approached Shakespeare's dramatic works through considerations of time. Time in the plays, as both subject matter (narrative theme) and as a key element of dramatic form (time scheme) has, with varying intensity, been a popular consideration in the field of Shakespeare criticism since the middle of the twentieth century. Time or temporality are also, however, important ordering principles for the majority of the theoretical approaches to early modern literary culture that have dominated modes of enquiry into Shakespeare's works in this period. This article considers the ways in which scholars' conceptualisations of time and the temporal in the plays have both shaped and been shaped by the increased popularity of critical temporal studies across the humanities, and more specifically by the range of theoretical frameworks – historicism, cultural materialism, new historicism, new materialism, presentism, new formalism, cognitivism – which have, to differing degrees, transformed the field of Shakespeare criticism over the last 50 years.

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“…This is hardly surprising, given that both Althusser's and Foucault's theoretical projects rest on static, closed, discontinuous, synchronic and essentially deterministic models of history, whereas Shakespeare's humanist historical model, which is opposed to determinism, is dynamic, diachronic, contingent and, as Kastan argues, 'open-ended'. 126 In other words, cultural historicism is fundamentally opposed to Shakespeare's own project of humanising history, so it follows that the majority of its practitioners tend to produce readings of the history plays that emphasise their supposed advocacy of the Elizabethan ideological state apparatus while neglecting Shakespeare's close attention to individual characters.…”

Section: Shakespeare's Humanist Historiographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Shakespeare's History Plays

Parvini¹

2012

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A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 4613 5 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 4614 2 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 0 7486 5496 3 (epub) ISBN 978 0 7486 5495 6 (Amazon ebook)The right of Neema Parvini to be identifi ed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. ContentsAcknowledgements vi A Note on Texts vii I would like to thank: Ewan Fernie and Robert Eaglestone, who helped me form some of the central ideas of this book; Roy Booth, who located a troublesome reference; Joanna Kershaw, who gave me some vital guidance on the religious debates of the medieval period; Brian Boyd, for his kind words and reading recommendations for evolutionary criticism; Andy Mousley, for his continued help and support; and Jackie Jones and Jenny Daly at Edinburgh University Press, for their enthusiasm for this book and organisation. Most importantly, my mentor, Kiernan Ryan, will have my eternal gratitude for being such an exacting, demanding and thoroughly excellent supervisor and editor. Without his invaluable advice, this book would not have been completed or taken its current shape. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for their continued love and support, and my wife, Ria, for her patience in enduring my endless attempts to explain Marxist theory to her.

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Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time

Cited by 79 publications

References 0 publications

Aristotelian Time, Ethics, and the Art of Persuasion in Shakespeare’s Henry V

Aristotelian Time, Ethics, and the Art of Persuasion in Shakespeare’s Henry V

Shakespeare, Time, Theory

Shakespeare's History Plays

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