Stanley Cavell's American Dream: Shakespeare, Philosophy, and Hollywood MoviesFordham Univ Press, 2006 - 248 pages This book explores Cavell's writings along converging lines of thought rather than in isolated categories. The author claims that, after Cavell's celebrated reading of King Lear turned into a nightmarish meditation on Vietnam, he found a more audible voice. Noting that Cavell's keen ear for the expressive power of ordinary language makes him both a first-rate literary artist and a compelling philosopher of the everyday, he catches what holds Cavell's manifold interests together. Here the poetry of ideas and presence of mind that animate Cavell's writing receive readings attuned to the spirit of their composition and its enlivening powers. |
From inside the book
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Page xvi
... reflection on its exis- tence is essentially unending , I would say essentially restless . Such a task is in effect recalled in Rhu's connecting what I write with events and interests and conditions of my more extended life , most ...
... reflection on its exis- tence is essentially unending , I would say essentially restless . Such a task is in effect recalled in Rhu's connecting what I write with events and interests and conditions of my more extended life , most ...
Page 1
... reflection remains consequential despite the esotericism of academic ex- pertise in many such contexts . Cavell finds unprecedented connections between Shakespearean drama and classic Hollywood films from the thirties and forties . When ...
... reflection remains consequential despite the esotericism of academic ex- pertise in many such contexts . Cavell finds unprecedented connections between Shakespearean drama and classic Hollywood films from the thirties and forties . When ...
Page 2
... reflection with a ready - made theory whose cogency he seeks to demonstrate . Rather , Thoreau promises " a success unex- pected in common hours . . . if one advances in the direction of his dreams , and endeavors to live the life he ...
... reflection with a ready - made theory whose cogency he seeks to demonstrate . Rather , Thoreau promises " a success unex- pected in common hours . . . if one advances in the direction of his dreams , and endeavors to live the life he ...
Page 3
... reflections about the dreams and dis- appointments that Americans shared in their experience of the world as they found it in the decades after that cataclysmic conflict . In recent years numerous studies of Cavell's writings have ...
... reflections about the dreams and dis- appointments that Americans shared in their experience of the world as they found it in the decades after that cataclysmic conflict . In recent years numerous studies of Cavell's writings have ...
Page 4
... reflection in- spired by masterworks of our shareable , if not common , culture . Cavell auditioned his earliest writing on Shakespeare , " The Avoidance of Love : A Reading of King Lear , " in a course called " Ideas of Man and the ...
... reflection in- spired by masterworks of our shareable , if not common , culture . Cavell auditioned his earliest writing on Shakespeare , " The Avoidance of Love : A Reading of King Lear , " in a course called " Ideas of Man and the ...
Contents
1 | |
24 | |
On Bloom and Cavell on Shakespeare | 60 |
From Skepticism to Perfectionism | 83 |
From Cyprus to Rushmore | 105 |
Reading Cavell Reading The Winters Tale | 136 |
Cavells Rome | 172 |
Notes | 211 |
Index | 241 |
Common terms and phrases
acknowledge American Antony argument Band Wagon become Binx Binx's Bloom calls Cambridge Cary Grant Cavell finds Cavell's Cavell's essay Cavell's reading Cavell's writing challenge characterizes Cities of Words Claim of Reason Cleopatra comedy of remarriage Contesting Tears context course criticism culture Descartes despite DiBattista Disowning Knowledge Emerson Emerson's Transcendental Etudes Emersonian Engle Essays and Poems experience expression film genre Gooding-Williams Hamlet Harold Bloom Harvard University Press Hermione Hermione's Hollywood comedy Hollywood movies human Ibid idea interpretation Justin Hodge King Lear Larkin's Leontes literary marriage melodrama Milton Montaigne Montaigne's moods moral Moreover Moviegoer Nietzsche North by Northwest occasion ordinary language philosophy Othello perfectionism perhaps perspective Philadelphia Story philosophy phrase play play's Pursuits of Happiness question remarriage comedy Renaissance response reveals Rorty scholar seeks Self-Reliance sense Shakespeare skepticism sonnet sort Stanley Cavell Stella Dallas texts thinking Thoreau Thornhill tion Tracy turn Walker Percy Winter's Tale Wittgenstein York
Popular passages
Page 53 - And for the usual method of teaching arts, I deem it to be an old error of universities, not yet well recovered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages, that instead of beginning with arts most easy (and those be such as are most obvious to the sense), they present their young unmatriculated novices at first coming with the most intellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics...
Page 120 - It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made, that we exist. That discovery is called the Fall of Man. Ever afterwards, we suspect our instruments.
Page 158 - A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that ; move still, still so, and own No other function. Each your doing, So singular in each particular, Crowns what you are doing in the present...
Page 194 - We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams.
Page 92 - These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.
Page 179 - ... forever, Free as an Arab Of thy beloved. Cling with life to the maid; But when the surprise, First vague shadow of surmise Flits across her bosom young, Of a joy apart from thee, Free be she, fancy-free; Nor thou detain her vesture's hem, Nor the palest rose she flung From her summer diadem. Though thou loved her as thyself, As a self of purer clay, Though her parting dims the day, Stealing grace from all alive; Heartily know, When half-gods go. The gods arrive.
Page 93 - Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars.