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"Originally published by Chatto & Windus in 1959, this book has long been out of print and largely neglected by Shakespearean scholars. It offers a viewpoint seldom considered: an unusual and exceptionally clear insight into Shakespeare's philosophy. It does so with freshness, modesty and conviction. Appreciating the danger Shakespeare faced in writing at a time of major religious intolerance, Vyvyan shows how subtly the plays explore aspects of the perennial philosophy allegorically. In doing so, Shakespeare raises the fundamental question of ethics: What ought we to do? &‘Shakespeare,' says the author, &‘is never ethically neutral. He is never in doubt as to whether the souls of his characters are rising or falling.' There is a constant pattern in the tragedies: &‘first the hero is untrue to his own self, then he casts out love, then conscience is gone - or rather inverted - and the devil enters into him.' Vyvyan shows us this pattern of damnation, or its counterpart - a pattern of regeneration - working out in certain plays, contrasting Hamlet with Measure for Measure and Othello with The Winter's Tale, where a similar dilemma and choice confront the hero. His intuitive insights also illumine Macbeth, Julius Caesar and Titus Andronicus which focus on the fall, whereas The Tempest explores most fully the pattern of regeneration and creative mercy."--Publisher.
Looking at some of the Shakespearean comedies, author John Vyvyan suggests they express a consistent, profoundly Christian philosophy of life based on the Platonic ideas of beauty and love. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, and All’s Well That Ends Well, the heroines bring to life the idea of love as the force that is awakened in the world by beauty which then leads the soul to perfection. Vyvyan believes that for Shakespeare, love was preeminent over human ideas of justice, that self-discovery was a supreme human experience, and that breaking faith with the ideal—as Agamemnon, Cressida, and Hector all do in Troilus and Cressida —sowed the seeds of tragedy. The author’s recognition of Shakespeare's use of allegory enables him to make sense of certain developments in these plays that seem weak or absurd from the psychological standpoint. He does not suggest that Shakespeare’s philosophy is the most important thing about his plays; it is simply one thing about them that ought to be known. The recognition of this philosophy enhances enjoyment of the plays, giving them a new dimension and richness. This edition contains a list of the author’s Shakespearean references and an enhanced index.
Originally published by Chatto & Windus in 1960 as the second volume in a trilogy, this book has long been out of print. It offers a viewpoint seldom considered: an unusual and exceptionally clear insight into Shakespeare's philosophy. It does so with freshness, modesty and conviction. John Vyvyan continues his exploration into Shakespeare's philosophy, begun in The Shakespearean Ethic, which he believes to have been consistent, consciously held and profoundly Christian. However, appreciating the danger faced in writing at a time of major religious intolerance, for 'by the orthodox standards of his age, [such a] philosophy was heretical', Vyvyan explains how Shakespeare used the medieval allegory of love, The Romance of the Rose, to veil his ideas. The ultimate principle of his unorthodoxy, Vyvyan points out, was not original. It was one that had 'been getting the mystics into trouble repeatedly since the early Middle Ages. Shakespeare's view, that love leads to the recognition of unity, in essence is a poet's presentation of the doctrine of divine immanence. This is something the mystics are continually reasserting'. In The Romance of the Rose, the heroine symbolises the highest form of Love, not just romance, but also the qualities of purity and constancy, as Vyvyan reveals by discussing at length Love's Labour's Lost, Two Gentlemen of Verona and Romeo and Juliet. He shows that, even in his earliest work, Shakespeare was moving towards the universal ideas of love, forgiveness and regeneration which found their fullest expression in The Tempest and A Winter's Tale. 'There is no other voice from the past', Vyvyan writes, 'to which we still listen so willingly; and this is not merely because he entertains us, even in the higher sense, but also because there is something in his outlook on life that is deeply satisfying.' Author Details: John Vyvyan, born in 1908 in Sussex, was educated mainly in Switzerland. His first profession was archaeology, and he worked with Sir Flinders Petrie in the Middle East. Illness, which dogged him all his life, ended this kind of arduous field work, and he retired from archaeology to become a Shakespearean scholar and to write. In recognition of his contribution to Shakespearean scholarship in his trilogy, The Shakespearean Ethic (1959), Shakespeare and the Rose of Love (1960) and Shakespeare and Platonic Beauty (1961), he was offered, but unable to take up, a visiting lectureship at the State University of New York. He died in Exmouth in 1975.
'More perceptive and convincing than a great deal that has ever been written on the subject 'close and attentive scholarship 'shrewd and ingenious observations.' A.L. Rowse, Daily Telegraph'Original and stimulating, Mr Vyvyan's thesis is important and serious: serious in the sense that his reading of the plays and his supporting reading into Shakespeare's climate of ideas is deep, connected and wide.' Times Literary Supplement'Two important insights bind together the central argument of this book ... Firstly, and most importantly, the author tells us that in Shakespeare "everything happens.
With modesty and conviction, this edition offers a viewpoint seldomly considered: an unusual and exceptionally clear insight into Shakespeare’s philosophy. Appreciating the danger Shakespeare faced in writing at a time of major religious intolerance, this fresh examination demonstrates how subtly his plays allegorically explore aspects of the perennial philosophy. In doing so, it argues, Shakespeare raises the fundamental question of ethics. Both thought provoking and persuasive, this book also contrasts Hamlet with Measure for Measure and Othello with The Winter’s Tale in order to expose the dilemmas that confront its heroes.
Drawing on the works of Shakespeare and American screenwriter Joss Whedon, this study in narrative ethics contends that Whedon is the Shakespeare of our time. The Bard wrote before the influence of the modern moral philosophers, while Whedon is writing in the postmodern period. It is argued that Whedon's work is more in harmony with the early modern values of Shakespeare than with modern ethics, which trace their origin to 17th and 18th century moral philosophy. This study includes a detailed discussion of representative works of Shakespeare and Whedon, showing how they can and should be read as forms of narrative ethics.
Shakespeare's History Plays boldly moves criticism of Shakespeare's history plays beyond anti-humanist theoretical approaches. This important intervention in the critical and theoretical discourse of Shakespeare studies summarises, evaluates and ultimately calls time on the mode of criticism that has prevailed in Shakespeare studies over the past thirty years. It heralds a new, more dynamic way of reading Shakespeare as a supremely intelligent and creative political thinker, whose history plays address and illuminate the very questions with which cultural historicists have been so preoccupied since the 1980s. In providing bold and original readings of the first and second tetralogies (Henry VI, Richard III, Richard II and Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2), the book reignites old debates and re-energises recent bids to humanise Shakespeare and to restore agency to the individual in the critical readings of his plays
This volume maps Shakespearean virtue in all its plasticity and variety, providing thirty-eight succinct, wide-ranging essays that reveal a breadth and diversity exceeding any given morality or code of behaviour. Clearly explaining key concepts in the history of ethics and in classical, theological, and global virtue traditions, the collection reveals their presence in the works of Shakespeare in interpersonal, civic, and ecological scenes of action. Paying close attention to individual identity and social environment, chapters also consider how the virtuous horizons broached in Shakespearean drama have been tested anew by the plays' global travels and fresh encounters with different traditions. Including sections on global wisdom, performance and pedagogy, this handbook affirms virtue as a resource for humanistic education and the building of human capacity.