Michelle Zerba

Doubt and Skepticism in Antiquity and the Renaissance (eBook, PDF)

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

This book is an interdisciplinary study of the forms and uses of doubt in works by Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Cicero, Machiavelli, Shakespeare and Montaigne. Based on close analysis of literary and philosophical texts by these important authors, Michelle Zerba argues that doubt is a defining experience in antiquity and the Renaissance, one that constantly challenges the limits of thought and representation. The wide-ranging discussion considers issues that run the gamut from tragic loss to comic bombast, from psychological collapse to skeptical dexterity and from solitary reflection to political improvisation in civic contexts and puts Greek and Roman treatments of doubt into dialogue not only with sixteenth-century texts but with contemporary works as well. Using the past to engage questions of vital concern to our time, Zerba demonstrates that although doubt sometimes has destructive consequences, it can also be conducive to tolerance, discovery and conversation across sociopolitical boundaries.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Erscheinungstermin: 9. Juli 2012
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781139534598
• Artikelnr.: 38280131

Autorenporträt

Michelle Zerba is Associate Professor of English, Classics, and Comparative Literature at Louisiana State University. She is the author of Tragedy and Theory: The Problem of Conflict since Aristotle (1988) and numerous articles on literature, rhetoric and philosophy in antiquity and the Renaissance.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction; Part I. 'Farewell the Tranquil Mind': Tragic Doubt in Homer's
Iliad, Sophocles' Philoctetes, and Shakespeare's Othello: 1. Achilles'
doubt and the construction of a heroism-at-one-remove in Homer's Iliad; 2.
Moral doubt and the contradictory claims of pity in Sophocles' Philoctetes;
3. 'Do as if for surety': doubt and delusions of certainty in Shakespeare's
Othello; Part II. Comic Skepticism and Polytropic Strategies in Homer's
Odyssey, Aristophanes' Women of the Thesmophoria, and Shakespeare's As You
Like It: 4. Wandering Odysseus, pyrrhonist Penelope, and the return from
alienation in Homer's Odyssey; 5. Parody, androgyny, and skeptical
inversions of gender and genre in Aristophanes' Women of the Thesmophoria
and Shakespeare's As You Like It; Part III. Skepticism, Politics, and
Rhetoric in the Works of Cicero, Machiavelli, and Montaigne: 6. Skeptical
constructions of identity in Roman and Renaissance humanism; 7. Academic
skepticism and Cicero's republican politics; 8. A Ciceronian Machiavelli;
9. Montaigne's pyrrhonist politics.