http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/2598871906

Shakespeare's extremes : wild man, monster, beast

Shakespeare's Extremes is a controversial intervention in current critical debates on the status of the human in Shakespeare's work. By focusing on three apparent cases of human exorbitance - Edgar, Caliban and Julius Caesar - this book seeks to limn out the domain of the human proper in Shakespeare. Three close readings of King Lear, The Tempest and Julius Caesar are preceded by an essay on the impasse of the human body in Marlovian drama. What does it take to make a human being? Drawing on philosophical work by Nietzsche, Heidegger and Badiou, among others, this book answers this question by showing that for the early modern playwright the human was an extremity-effect, a border occurrence devoid of evental force and yet capable of heroic action, ironic reaction and savage counteraction.

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