Shakespeare / Nature sets new agendas for the study of nature in Shakespeare's work. Offering a rich exploration of the intersections between the human and non-human worlds, the chapters focus on the contested and persuasive language of nature, both as organic matter and cultural conditioning.
Rooted in close textual analysis and historical acuity, this collection addresses Shakespeare's works through the many ways in which 'nature' performs, as a cultural category, a moral marker and a set of essential conditions through which the human may pass, as well as affect. Addressing the complex conditions of the play worlds, the chapters explore the assorted forms through which Shakespeare's nature makes sense of its narratives and supports, upholds or contests its story-telling.
Over the course of the collection, the contributors examine plays including
Macbeth,
Julius Caesar,
The Tempest,
The Taming of the Shrew,
Othello,
Love's Labour's Lost,
Hamlet,
Timon of Athens and many more. They discuss them through the various lenses of philosophy, historicism, psychoanalysis, gender studies, cosmography, geography, sexuality, linguistics, environmentalism, feminism and robotics, to provide new and nuanced readings of the intersectional terms of both meaning and matter.
Approaching 'nature' in all its multiplicity, this collection sets out to examine the divergent and complex ways in which the human and non-human worlds intersect and the development of a language of symbiosis that attempts to both control and create the terms of human authority. It offers an entirely new approach to the subject of nature, bringing together disparate methods that have previously been pursued independently to offer a shared investment in the intersections between the human and non-human worlds and how these discourses shape and condition the emotional, organic, cultural and psychological landscapes of Shakespeare's play worlds.
Cooper, Farah Karim: -
Farah Karim-Cooper is Head of Higher Education & Research, Shakespeare's Globe and Professor of Shakespeare Studies, King's College London, UK.
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Massai, Sonia: - "Sonia Massai is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy, and Visiting Professor of Shakespeare Studies at King's College London, UK. With Amy Lidster, she is co-editor of Shakespeare at War: A Material History (2023) and co-curator of the Shakespeare and War exhibition at the National Army Museum (October 2023 - April 2024). Her other publications include her books on Shakespeare's Accents: Voicing Identity in Performance (2020) and Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor (2007), her collections of essays on Hamlet for the Arden Shakespeare 'State of Play' series (The Arden Shakespeare, 2021), on Ivo van Hove (Methuen Drama, 2018), Shakespeare and Textual Studies (2015) and on World-Wide Shakespeares (2005), and critical editions of The Paratexts in English Printed Drama to 1642 (2014) and John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore for Arden Early Modern Drama (The Arden Shakespeare, 2011)."
McMullan, Gordon: - Gordon McMullan is a professor of English at King's College London, UK.
Munro, Lucy: - Lucy Munro is Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature at King's College London, UK. She is the author of Children of the Queen's Revels: A Jacobean Theatre Repertory (2005), Archaic Style in English Literature, 1590-1674 (2013) and Shakespeare in the Theatre: The King's Men (2020), and the editor of plays including Fletcher's The Tamer Tamed and Dekker, Ford and Rowley's The Witch of Edmonton.
Scott, Charlotte: - Charlotte Scott is Director of Knowledge & Engagement at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, UK, and was formerly Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. Her publications include The Child in Shakespeare (2018), Shakespeare's Nature: From Cultivation to Culture (2014) and Shakespeare and the Idea of the Book (2007), as well as book chapters, journal articles and reviews. She was textual editor for the RSC Complete Works and pedagogical advisor for the New Oxford Shakespeare.
