Open Subjects: English Renaissance Republicans, Modern Selfhoods and the Virtue of Vunerability (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Renaissance Culture) - Softcover

James Kuzner

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0748664874 ISBN 13: 9780748664870

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2012

Synopsis

This is the first exploration of how early modern republican and contemporary radical thought connect with and complement each other. Studies of the republican legacy have proliferated in recent years, always to argue for a polity that cultivates the virtues, protections, and entitlements which foster the self's ability to simulate an invulnerable existence. James Kuzner's original new study of writings by Spenser, Shakespeare, Marvell and Milton is the first to present a genealogy for the modern self in which its republican origins can be understood far more radically. In doing so, the study is also the first to draw radical and republican thought into sustained conversation, and to locate a republic for which vulnerability is, unexpectedly, as much what community has to offer as it is what community guards against. At a time when the drive to safeguard citizens has gathered enough momentum to justify almost any state action, "Open Subjects" questions whether vulnerability is the evil we so often believe it to be. It traces English republicanism from the late-16 century to the late-17th century. It analyses Renaissance literary texts against classical, early modern and contemporary political thought. It includes new readings of English Renaissance figures in histories of friendship, the public sphere and selfhood.

About this title

About the Author

James Kuzner is Assistant Professor at Case Western Reserve University.

From the Back Cover

Edinburgh Critical Studies in Renaissance Culture Series Editor: Lorna Hutson These original interpretations of Renaissance culture focus on literary texts in English and in a range of vernacular languages. They also deal with the reception and transformation of the Greco-Roman literary, political and intellectual heritage. 'This is revelatory work that pries open challenging literary texts to reveal human vulnerability as a central thematic and political element. Kuzner will change our thinking about the early modern subject.' Barbara Correll, Cornell University 'Sensitive to ambient changes in social life, Kuzner's heroes of vulnerability, adrift in an unguarded existence where immune defenses have been turned off, hatch scripts for "worlds elsewhere," alternative modernities founded on pleasure, enjoyment, and the forms of openness they incite and sustain.' Julia Reinhard Lupton, author of Thinking with Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and Life Open Subjects: English Renaissance Republicans, Modern Selfhoods and the Virtue of Vulnerability James Kuzner Studies of the republican legacy have proliferated in recent years, always to argue for a polity that cultivates the virtues, protections and entitlements which foster the self's ability to simulate an invulnerable existence. James Kuzner's original new study of writing by Spenser, Shakespeare, Marvell and Milton is the first to present a genealogy for the modern self in which its republican origins can be understood far more radically. In doing so, this study is also the first to draw radical and republican thought into sustained conversation, and to locate a republic for which vulnerability is, unexpectedly, as much what community has to offer as it is what community guards against. At a time when the drive to safeguard citizens has gathered enough momentum to justify almost any state action, Open Subjects questions whether vulnerability is the evil we so often believe it to be. James Kuzner is Assistant Professor at Case Western Reserve University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0748664874
• ISBN 13: 9780748664870
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232