Staging the Gaze Postmodernism, Psychoanalysis, and Shakespearean Comedy - Softcover

Freedman, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080149737X ISBN 13: 9780801497377

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 1991

Synopsis

Challenging the idea that one can apply postmodern theory or psychoanalysis to Shakespearean comedy, Barbara Freedman explores how all three share the common function of interrogating and subverting traditional models of knowing. In this original, provocative book, Freedman defines theatricality as an interactive trap or strategic decentering that breaks down distinctions between observer and observed. The author first grounds her interpretation of the theatrical gaze historically in the context of the humanistic tradition of right spectatorship and the Renaissance countertradition of trick perspectives; she then traces the use of the gaze from its roots in Renaissance optics and strategies of learned ignoracne through Freud, Merleau-Ponty, and Lacan, to recent appropriations of Lacanian thought by feminism, deconstruction, cultural materialism, and film theory. Maintaining that Shakespeare's comedies stage resistance to meaning as a form of knowledge, she examines their notorious resistance to - and mockery of - interpretation in the context of the rich tradition which portrayed blindness and erring as a form of insight. 'Staging the Gaze' both suggests a new direction for Shakespeare studies and genuinely advances critical theory. It will be essential reading for Shakespeare scholars, for students of Renaissance literature, and for others interested in the controversies surrounding postmodern theory in the fields of feminist and psychoanalytic criticism, film theory, performance theory, and art criticism.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 080149737X
• ISBN 13: 9780801497377
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 244