Shakespeare's Tragic Cosmos

Focusing on Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, the four main tragedies and Antony and Cleopatra, the author examines two models of nature in Renaissance culture, one hierarchical and the other contrarious.

Thomas McAlindon (Author)

9780521566056, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 18 April 1996

328 pages
21.4 x 13.8 x 2 cm, 0.349 kg

' ... a work of genuine scholarship ... a humane study and one of real intellectual integrity'. The Yearbook of English Studies

This study focuses on Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, the four main tragedies and Antony and Cleopatra. Tom McAlindon argues that there were two models of nature in Renaissance culture, one hierarchical, in which everything has an appointed place, and the other contrarious, showing nature as a tense system of interacting opposites, liable to sudden collapse and transformation. This latter model informs Shakespeare's tragedy.

1. Introduction: 'Nature's fragile vessel'
2. A medieval approach: Chaucer's tale of love and strife
3. Romeo and Juliet
4. Julius Caesar
5. Hamlet
6. Othello
7. King Lear
8. Macbeth
9. Antony and Cleopatra.

Subject Areas: Shakespeare studies & criticism [DSGS]