Reason Diminished: Shakespeare and the Marvelous

Front Cover
U of Nebraska Press, Jan 1, 1997 - Literary Criticism - 271 pages
Reason Diminished examines ?the power that wonder wields over reason in [Shakespeare?s] late plays, both philosophically and dramaturgically.? Peter Platt posits that, in these famous plays, wonder and the marvelous are assigned preeminent positions over reason and order. In fact, Platt argues that the marvelous played a crucial role in Renaissance culture as a whole. ø The book opens by surveying theories of wonder from Aristotle?s Poetics and Metaphysics through the writings of Renaissance theorists. A crucial chapter examines the many ways that the Renaissance attempted to bring the marvelous to bear on the world around it. The next two chapters look at the tension between realism and the marvelous in Elizabethan fiction and the theatrical tradition of the masque. ø Part of the book examines the role of wonder and the marvelous in Shakespeare?s ?romances?: Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter?s Tale, and The Tempest. ?Shakespeare?s romances,? writes Platt, ?represent various experiments with the marvelous.? Platt argues that ?late Shakespeare . . . invites the spectators to engage in?and in some cases to shape?the marvels on the stage before them.? ø A persuasive and resourceful study of some of Shakespeare?s most celebrated works, Reason Diminished will add significantly to the ongoing reassessment of Shakespeare?s plays and the world in which they took shape.

From inside the book

Contents

Wonder and the Reformation
19
Wonder and the Natural World
36
Wonder and Elizabethan Fiction
66
The Masque and the Marvelous
99
Pericles and the Wonder
124
Amazd with Matter
139
Wonder
153
Wonder Personified Wonder
169
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1997)

Peter Platt is an assistant professor of English at Barnard College. This is his first book.

Bibliographic information