Winner of the AEDEAN "Enrique Garcia Diez" Literature Research Award 2023

Winner of the European Society for the Study of English Book Award 2024

Shakespeare's Sublime Ethos: Matter, Stage, Form breaks new ground in providing a sustained, demystifying treatment of its subject and looking for answers to basic questions regarding the creation, experience, aesthetics and philosophy of Shakespearean sublimity. More specifically, it explores how Shakespeare generates a sublime mood or ethos which predisposes audiences intellectually and emotionally for the full experience of sublime pathos, explored in the companion volume, Shakespeare's Sublime Pathos. To do so, it examines Shakespeare's invention of sublime matter, his exploitation of the special characteristics of the Elizabethan stage, and his dramaturgical and formal simulacra of absolute space and time. In the process, it considers Shakespeare's conception of the universe and man's place in it and uncovers the epistemological and existential implications of key aspects of his art. As the argument unfolds, a case is made for a transhistorically baroque Shakespeare whose "bastard art" enables the dramatic restoration of an original innocence where ignorance really is bliss. Taken together, Shakespeare's Sublime Ethos and Shakespeare's Sublime Pathos show how Shakespearean drama integrates matter and spirit on hierarchical planes of cognition and argue that, ultimately, his is an immanent sublimity of the here-and-now enfolding a transcendence which may be imagined, simulated or evoked, but never achieved.

About the Author

Jonathan P. A. Sell is Professor of English Literature at the Universidad de Alcala, Spain. He holds degrees from the universities of Oxford, London and Alcala, 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).

Reviews

"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

"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."

--Rocio 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."

--Zenon Luis-Martinez

Book Information
ISBN 9781032018157
Author Jonathan P. A. Sell
Format Paperback
Page Count 260
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 440g