Books

Pub Date
2019
ISBN
9781474439572
Page Count
192

Shakespeare and the Truth-Teller: Confronting the Cynic Ideal

By David Hershinow

University of Edinburgh Press

Highlighting the necessity of literary thinking to political philosophy, this book explores Shakespeare’s responses to sixteenth-century debates over the revolutionary potential of Cynic critical activity – debates that persist in later centuries and inform major developments in Western intellectual history. Analysing cynic characterisations of Lear’s Fool, Hamlet and Timon of Athens, Hershinow presents new ways of thinking about modernity’s engagement with classical models and literature’s engagement with politics.