Front cover image for The time is out of joint : Shakespeare as philosopher of history

The time is out of joint : Shakespeare as philosopher of history

The Time Is Out of Joint handles the Shakespearean ouvre from a philosophical perspective, finding that Shakespeare's historical dramas reflect on issues and reveal puzzles which were taken up by philosophy proper only in the centuries following them. Shakespeare's extraordinary handling of time and temporality, the difference between truth and fact, that of theory, and that of interpretation and revelatory truth are evaluated in terms of Shakespeare's own conjectural endeavors, and are compared with early modern, modern, and postmodern thought. Heller shows that modernity, which recognized itself in Shakespeare only from the time of Romanticism, found in Shakespeare's work a revelatory character which marked the end of both metaphysical system-building and a tragic reckoning with the inaccessibility of an absolute, timeless truth.
Print Book, English, ©2002
Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Md., ©2002
History
viii, 375 pages ; 24 cm
9780742512504, 9780742512511, 0742512509, 0742512517
59398301
Introduction1(14)
Part I: The Time Is Out of Joint
What Is Nature? What Is Natural?
15(18)
Who Am I? Dressing Up, Stripping Naked
33(24)
Acting, Playing, Pretending, Disguising
57(18)
The Absolute Strangers
75(14)
Judgment of Human Character: To Betray and to Be Betrayed
89(10)
Love, Sex, Subversion: Political Drama, Family Drama
99(18)
The Sphinx Called Time
117(26)
Virtues and Vices: Guilt, Good, and Evil
143(20)
Part II The History Plays
Richard II
163(28)
1, 2, and 3 Henry VI
191(62)
The Tragedy of King Richard III
253(28)
Part III: Three Roman Plays
Coriolanus
281(30)
Julius Caesar
311(26)
Antony and Cleopatra
337(30)
Postscript: Historical Truth and Poetic Truth367(8)
About the Author375