Shakespeare and Wisdom - by Unhae Park Langis & Julia Reinhard Lupton (Hardcover)

About the Book

Explores how Shakespeare uses global wisdom literatures to encourage spiritual and moral growth and the arts of living in a connected world

Book Synopsis

This volume interweaves Shakespeare's wisdom with ancient spiritual practices and the insights of a post-secular age in order to explore a transhistorical space of sapient knowing and living. Pursuing the delight of heart, soul and understanding in the synaesthetic experience of theatre and the meditative space of poetry, sapiential Shakespeare explores knowledge, love, beauty, nature, will and power in conversation with multiple wisdom traditions, tapping into a global sensus communis rooted in energetic knowing-with. This collection of essays begins in the Mediterranean with classical, biblical and Egyptian wisdom, moves to the East to consider Sufi and Buddhist wisdom and then turns to the West to reflect on Indigenous science and ways of knowing. Sharing a common root in oikos, meaning home, the ecumenical and the ecological converge in an embodied ethics and politics of care premised in an ecological rather than ego-logical way of being.

From the Back Cover

[headline]Explores how Shakespeare uses global wisdom literatures to encourage spiritual and moral growth and the arts of living in a connected world This volume interweaves Shakespeare's wisdom with ancient spiritual practices and the insights of a post-secular age to explore a transhistorical space of sapient knowing and living. It argues that Shakespeare inherits and participates in global wisdom literature, speaking through women, philosophers and fools about the beauty, dignity and variety of the cosmos and its creatures. Beginning in the Mediterranean with classical, biblical and Egyptian wisdom, the collection then moves to the East to consider Sufi and Buddhist wisdom and then turns to the West to reflect on Indigenous science and ways of knowing. In pursuing the delight of heart, soul and understanding in the synaesthetic experience of theatre and the meditative space of poetry, sapiential Shakespeare explores knowledge, love, beauty, nature, will and power in conversation with multiple wisdom traditions. [bio]Unhae Park Langis is a scholar-seeker-activist and a former teacher of twenty years. She is the author of Passion, Prudence, and Virtue in Shakespearean Drama (2011). Her essays have appeared in Shakespeare Studies, EMLS, Upstart Crow and Literature Compass and other journals, as well as in recent collections such as Shakespeare and Virtue: A Handbook (2023) and Shakespeare's Virtuous Theatre: Power, Capacity, and the Good (2023). Julia Reinhard Lupton is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. Her publications include Thinking with Shakespeare (2015); Shakespeare Dwelling (2018); Face to Face with Shakespeare (with Matthew Smith, 2019); Shakespeare and Virtue: A Handbook (with Donovan Sherman, 2023); and Shakespeare's Virtuous Theatre: Power, Capacity, and the Good (with Kent Lehnhof and Carolyn Sale, 2023).

Review Quotes

This collection views Shakespeare as a curate of wisdom traditions. Inviting and yet unapologetic, its authors reimagine Shakespeare criticism as an ecumenical conversation about the art of living held between ancient voices and today's post-secular age. It is a book that warrants not responding to but thinking with.--Matthew J. Smith, Hildegard College

About the Author

Unhae Park Langis is a scholar-seeker, Love activist, Earth travailer and stitcher of text and textile. A former teacher of twenty years, she is the author of Passion, Prudence, and Virtue in Shakespearean Drama (2011) and numerous essays in ethical criticism in collections and journals including Shakespeare Studies, EMLS, Upstart Crow, and Literature Compass. As a research fellow at the New Swan Shakespeare Center, University of California, Irvine, Langis has evolved from a virtue to a multi-perspectival wisdom hermeneutic through Stoic, Buddhist and Sufi readings of Shakespeare in several collections including this present volume.

Julia Reinhard Lupton is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author or co-author of five books, including Shakespeare Dwelling: Designs for the Theater of Life (2018), Thinking with Shakespeare (2015), and Citizen-Saints (2012). She has edited or co-edited many volumes and special issues, including Shakespeare and Virtue: A Handbook (with Donovan Sherman), and Shakespeare's Virtuous Theatre: Power, Capacity, and the Good (with Kent Lehnhof and Carolyn Sale), Shakespeare and Hospitality (with David Goldstein), and Face to Face with Shakespeare (with Matthew Smith). She is a former Guggenheim Fellow and a former Trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America.