Disowning Knowledge in Six Plays of Shakespeare (2nd Edition)

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by Stanley Cavell

Cambridge University Press

Due/Published November 2002, 260 pages, paper

ISBN 0521529204

Reissued with a new preface and a new essay on Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Coriolanius, Hamlet and The Winter's Tale, this well-known collection of essays on Shakespeare's tragedies considers the plays as responses to the crisis of knowledge and the emergence of modern skepticism.

"Cavell's essays on Shakespeare--deep, intellectually tenacious, and humane meditations on the nature of artistic genius--are thrilling and essential reading. They illuminate the relation between skepticism and theater, transform the language of literary criticism, and heighten the ethical significance of aesthetic response." - Stephen Greenblatt

"These beautiful essays on Shakespeare, lucid, complicated, and deeply moving, are unique in recent criticism for the conversation they forge between philosophy and literature. Unified by the twin themes of knowledge and acknowledgement...the volume brings together some of the most remarkable literary essays in modern scholarship. To his now famous readings of six plays of Shakespeare, Cavell now adds a stunning new piece on Macbeth, containing complicated meditations about gender, sexuality, and humanity." - Martha Nussbaum