1st Edition
Shakespeare's Sublime Pathos Person, Audience, Language
Introduction
Aims and "ethos"
Plan of the work
Chapter 1. The Conundrum of Character, the Sublime Mistook
Judith’s face
Ambiguity, realism, sublimity
Ambiguity, freedom, sublimity
Contemptus mundi
Chapter 2. Hollow Men
Liberal humanist character
Protean persons
The moral core
Freedom of choice?
Mutualistic character
Myriad minds
Chapter 3. Sympathetic Imagination
Sympathy and imagination
Psychology and phantasia
Passionate playgoing
Chapter 4. Language of Passion
Cause and effect
"Conceit deceitful"
Thought in progress
Botching words
Entangled, obscure, baroque
Chapter 5. The Mutualist’s Dividend
Going mad with Shakespeare
Transcendence?
"The sticking place"
General Conclusions
The Shakespearean sublime
Shakespeare’s originality
Enter perfection?
Letting in the daylight
Epilogue
Mechanical dreams
Orsino’s luck
Index
Biography
Jonathan P. A. Sell is Professor of English Literature at the Universidad de Alcalá, Spain. He holds degrees from the universities of Oxford, London and Alcalá, and his main fields of research are early modern and contemporary literature. He has written numerous articles and several books, including Rhetoric and Wonder in English Travel Writing, 1560–1613 (2006), Allusion, Identity and Community (2012) and Conocer a Shakespeare (Getting to Know Shakespeare, (2012).
"Complex, far-ranging, at times dazzling, there is nothing really comparable to the sweep of this work"
--Clark Hulse, University of Illinois at Chicago
"This is a magnum opus in every sense of the word […] A thorough, indeed breath-takingly thorough knowledge of Shakespearean writing is everywhere in evidence"
--Andrew Hiscock, Bangor University
"Taken together, then, these two works on Shakespeare’s sublime [Shakespeare’s Sublime Ethos and Shakespeare’s Sublime Pathos] represent an outstanding contribution not only to Shakespeare studies, but more broadly to intellectual history. In seeking to make intelligible the seemingly inexplicable, Sell has succeeded in revealing the secrets of the apparent magic of the sublime."
--RocÃo G. Sumillera, Universidad de Granada
"The powerful categorizing of the sublime’s coefficients is proof of Sell’s immense merit and designates this monograph as superior research destined to become seminal in Shakespeare studies."
--Zenón Luis-MartÃnez
