Shakespeare in Hindsight: Counterfactual Thinking and Shakespearean Tragedy

by Amir Khan

Overview

We know William Shakespeare matters but we cannot pinpoint, precisely, why he matters. Lacking reasons why, we do our best to involve him in others, or involve others in him. He has been branded many times over—as Catholic, Protestant, Materialist, Marxist, Psychoanalytic, Feminist, Postcolonial, Popular, Cultural, and, even, Popular-Cultural. In many ways, Shakespeare is overwrought. Why one more ‘approach’ to Shakespeare? One reason is because whatever these approaches say about tragedy in particular, none of them help us to feel tragedy. Or, rather, they subordinate tragedy to something else—to considerations of, say, class, race, or gender. What these approaches manage to do is explain tragedy away. What this book does is to help us feel tragedy first and foremost—hence to perceive it better. The aim of Amir Khan’s counterfactual criticism of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, A Winter’s Tale and Othello, then, is precisely to reanimate the tragic effect, long since lost in some deluge of explanation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474426046
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	08/01/2017
Series:	Edinburgh Critical Studies in Shakespeare and Philosophy
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Amir Khan is Xinghai Associate Professor of English in the School of Foreign Languages at Dalian Maritime University. His books include Comedies of Nihilism (2017) and Shakespeare in Hindsight (2016). He is managing editor of Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies. He lives and works in China.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments; A Note on Texts; 1. Introduction; 2. My Kingdom for a Ghost: Counterfactual Thinking and Hamlet; 3. Reversing Good and Evil: Counterfactual Thinking and King Lear; 4. Staging Passivity: Counterfactual Thinking and Macbeth; 5. Reversing Time: Counterfactual Thinking and The Winter’s Tale ; 6. ‘Why Indeed Did I Marry?’ Counterfactual Thinking and Othello ; 7. Conclusion; Endnotes; Bibliography.

What People are Saying About This

Folger Shakespeare Library - Gail Kern Paster

A splendidly original investigation of Shakespeare’s most beloved tragedies. I applaud Khan for his courage and ambition in offering the reader a way of experiencing these familiar plays as if for the first time by re-examining the basic premises of character and action. For readers of his book, Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, and Othello will never be the same.

Editorial Reviews

A splendidly original investigation of Shakespeare’s most beloved tragedies. I applaud Khan for his courage and ambition in offering the reader a way of experiencing these familiar plays as if for the first time by re-examining the basic premises of character and action. For readers of his book, Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, and Othello will never be the same.

Folger Shakespeare Library - Gail Kern Paster