Peter Holbrook (University of Queensland): "Shakespeare, English Literature, and the Politics of Nature"
Gastvortrag im Rahmen der DFG-Forschergruppe "Natur in politischen Ordnungsentwürfen"
04.05.2017 19:00 Uhr – 21:00 Uhr
Veranstaltet vom Teilprojekt 9: "Natur und Gesetz in der englischen Literatur der Frühen Neuzeit: Shakespeare, Milton, Cavendish"
Ort: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Shakespeare-Forschungsbibliothek (Raum R206), Schellingstr. 3 Rg, 80799 München
Zeit: Donnerstag, 4. Mai 2017, 19 c.t. bis 21 Uhr
This paper will take up a few of the specifically political understandings of nature in some of Shakespeare's plays - understandings that, to my mind, have a certain levelling or egalitarian implication. In particular, I'm interested in how "nature" is often invoked as a way of targeting a distorted or corrupt political regime. The paper emerges out of my intuition that nature is not exhausted as a critical category, and that literary works in English, notably Shakespeare's, frequently indicate something of the range, contradictoriness, and potential of the concept.
Peter Holbrook is Professor of Shakespeare and English Renaissance Literature at UQ, where he directs a Node of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Europe, 1100-1800). A recent publication is English Renaissance Tragedy: Ideas of Freedom (London: Bloomsbury/Arden Shakespeare, 2015); Shakespeare's Individualism appeared in 2010 with Cambridge University Press. He is currently writing a book on the idea of naturalness in English literature.