Literary Criticism, Shakespeare

Shakespeare's Humanism

Name: Shakespeare's Humanism
Author: Robin Headlam Wells
ISBN: 9780521824385

by Robin Headlam Wells

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Synopsis

Arguing that belief in a universal human nature was as important to Shakespeare as to every other Renaissance writer, this book questions the central principle of postmodern Shakespeare criticism. Postmodernists insist that the notion of a defining human essence was alien to Shakespeare and his contemporaries and as radical anti-essentialists, the Elizabethans were, in effect, postmodernists before their time. Challenging this claim, this book demonstrates that for Shakespeare, as for every other humanist writer in this period, the key to all wise action was 'the knowledge of our selves and our human condition.'

About the Author, Robin Headlam Wells

Robin Headlam Wells is Professor of English Literature and Director of the Centre for Research in Renaissance Studies at Roehampton University. His books include Elizabethan Mythologies (Cambridge, 1994) and Shakespeare on Masculinity (Cambridge, 2000).