A Buddhist's Shakespeare: Affirming Self-deconstructions

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Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1994 - Buddhism and literature - 273 pages
"In this argument, Howe applies his Buddhist perspective to some key ideas of neo-Marxists, Michel Foucault, and new historicists concerning the relations between literature and society. This perspective provides new challenges to the Marxist view that society necessarily determines our consciousness, Foucault's position that everyone in society is necessarily enclosed within a power field of competing and therefore oppositional interests, and the new historicist position that a society's established authority maintains itself in part by legitimating dissent in order to contain it. Howe proposes instead the possibility of a non-oppositional, nonideological posture in which one can stand apart from the class oppositions of Marx, the power field of Foucault, and the containment of dissent alleged by many new historicists, yet in a way which actually reduces the misery caused by social injustice." "Engaging contemporary theoretical debate, Howe draws a parallel between Jacques Derrida's ideas about "differance" - in which "presence" occurs only in "absence" - and the Buddhist idea of shunyata, the fullness of emptiness. He also shows the similarities between Derrida's and Buddhism's critiques of reason and language.".

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Contents

Pacifying Action in A Midsummer Nights Dream
27
Awakening The Sword of Prajna in the Visual Arts and in Richard III
51
The Merchant of Venice as Sword of Prajna
74
The Cause of Suffering and the Birth of Compassion in Julius Caesar
96
The Emptiness of Differenceand the Six Samsaric Realms in Antony and Cleopatra
114
Prince Hals Deferral as the Ground of Free Play
146
Further Glimpses of Free Play in Hamlet and King Lear
168
The Tempest
191
The Sword of Prajna in the Visual Arts of the Continent
200
Shakespeares Access to Renaissance Practices in the Visual Arts
223
Notes
228
Glossary of Buddhist and BuddhistRelated Terms
253
List of Works Cited
256
Index
270
Copyright

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Page 29 - I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, — past the wit of man to say what dream it was : man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream.

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