Class, Critics, and Shakespeare: Bottom Lines on the Culture WarsClass, Critics, and Shakespeare is a provocative contribution to "the culture wars." It engages with an ongoing debate about literary canons, the democratization of literary study, and of higher education in general. For a generation at least, academic readings of literary works, including those of Shakespeare, have often challenged privilege based on race, gender, and sexuality. Sharon O'Dair observes that in these same readings, class privilege has remained effectively unchallenged, despite repeated invocations of it within multiculturalism. She identifies what she sees as a structurally necessary class bias in academic literary and cultural criticism, specifically in the contemporary reception of William Shakespeare's plays. The author builds her argument by offering readings of Shakespeare that put class at the center of the analysis--not just in Shakespeare's plays or in early modern England, but in the academy and in American society today. Individual chapters focus on The Tempest and education, Timon of Athens and capitalism, Coriolanus and political representation. Other chapters treat the politics of cultural tourism and land-use in the Pacific northwest, and analyze the politics of the academic left in the U.S. today, focusing on the debate between what has been called a "social" left and a "cultural" left. The author's quest is to understand why an intellectual culture that values diversity and pluralism can so easily disdain and ignore the working-class people she grew up with. Her provocative and heartfelt critique of academic culture will challenge and enlighten a broad range of audiences, including those in cultural studies, American studies, literary criticism, and early modern literature. Sharon O'Dair is Associate Professor of English, University of Alabama. |
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Contents
Introduction Bottom Lines | 1 |
Burn but his books Intellectual Domination in The Tempest | 23 |
Aping Aristocrats Timon of Athens and the Anticapitalism of Intellectuals | 43 |
Fobbing Off Disgrace with a Tale Stories about Voices in Coriolanus | 67 |
Shakespeare in the Woods The Class Politics of Cultural Tourism | 89 |
Conclusion Seeing Red Seeing the Rift in the Left | 115 |
Notes | 133 |
143 | |
161 | |
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Common terms and phrases
academic acknowledge American Right analysis Anticapitalism argument aristocratic Ashland Bartholomew Fair Brint Bristol Caliban capitalist century claims conflict contemporary Coriolanus Coriolanus's Credential critique Croteau cultural capital cultural Left Daniel Bell debate Democratic Derber discourse displaced distinction dominant early modern England economic Elias elite enclosure English environmental essay example exclusively Fish Frow gentrification Gitlin Guillory hierarchy Hofstadter ideological income inequality institutions intellectual interests judgment Kastan labor land literary critics literature loggers Louis Montrose Magrass Marx Marxian Marxism means ment middle class Montrose offered Oregon Oregon Shakespeare Festival pastoral Patterson percent perhaps play plebeians political privilege problem production profes professional professions Prospero radical reading relationship Richard Rorty Robbins Rorty Shakespeare social power Social Text society Sokal affair status groups story stratification structure suggests Tempest Theory Timon of Athens tion tradition University upper voice Weber workers working-class York
References to this book
A Companion to Shakespeare's Works, A Companion to Shakespeare's Works: The ... Richard Dutton,Jean E. Howard No preview available - 2003 |
A Companion to Shakespeare's Works, A Companion to Shakespeare's Works: The ... Richard Dutton,Jean E. Howard No preview available - 2003 |