Shakespeare’s Influence on Karl Marx - Christian A. Smith

Shakespeare’s Influence on Karl Marx

The Shakespearean Roots of Marxism
Buch | Softcover
304 Seiten
2023
Routledge (Verlag)
978-0-367-55930-4 (ISBN)
49,85 inkl. MwSt
This volume presents a close-reading of instances of Shakespearean quotations, allusions, imagery, and rhetoric found in Karl Marx’s collected works and letters which provides evidence that Shakespeare’s writings exerted a formative influence on Marx and the development of his work.
This volume presents a close reading of instances of Shakespearean quotations, allusions, imagery and rhetoric found in Karl Marx’s collected works and letters, which provides evidence that Shakespeare’s writings exerted a formative influence on Marx and the development of his work. Through a methodology of intertextual and interlingual close-reading, this study provides evidence of the extent to which Shakespeare influenced Marx and to which Marxism has Shakespearean roots. As a child, Marx was home-schooled in Ludwig von Westphalen’s little academy, as it were, which was Shakespeare- and literary-focused. The group included von Westphalen’s daughter, who later became Marx’s wife, Jenny. The influence of Shakespeare in Marx’s writings shows up as early as his school essays and love letters. He modelled his early journalism partly on ideas and rhetoric found in Shakespeare’s plays. Each turn in the development of Marx’s thought—from Romantic to Left Hegelian and then to Communist—is achieved in part through his use of literature, especially Shakespeare. Marx’s mature texts on history, politics and economics—including the famous first volume of Das Kapital—are laden with Shakespearean allusions and quotations. Marx's engagement with Shakespeare resulted in the development of a framework of characters and imagery he used to stand for and anchor the different concepts in his political critique. Marx’s prose style uses a conceit in which politics are depicted as performative. Later, the Marx family—Marx, Jenny and their children—was central in the late-19th-century revival of Shakespeare on the London stage, and in the growth of academic Shakespeare scholarship. Through providing evidence for a formative role of Shakespeare in the development of Marxism, the present study suggests a formative role for literature in the history of ideas.

Christian A. Smith received his doctorate in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. His thesis topic is “Shakespeare’s Influence on Marx, Freud and the Frankfurt School Critical Theorists.” He worked as a Teaching Fellow at Warwick English and was awarded an Honorary Shakespeare Research Fellowship at Kingston University London. He has published papers in Shakespeare Studies, Marxist Studies and Translation Studies journals and edited a Karl Marx Bicentennial special edition of Shakespeare journal. He wrote the chapter on Marxist Shakespeare Studies for The Arden Research Handbook of Contemporary Shakespeare Criticism.

Acknowledgements

Chapter I: In Love in Shakespeare

Chapter II: “But Where Then? That Is the question”

Chapter III: Standing the World on Its Feet: The Rheinische Zeitung Articles

Chapter IV: “The Point Is to change It”

Chapter V: “That Smooth-Faced Gentleman, Tickling Commodity”

Chapter VI: “Such Men Are Dangerous:” Politics, History and Revolution

Works Cited

Erscheinungsdatum
Reihe/Serie Routledge Studies in Shakespeare
Verlagsort London
Sprache englisch
Maße 152 x 229 mm
Gewicht 453 g
Themenwelt Literatur Lyrik / Dramatik Dramatik / Theater
Geisteswissenschaften Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft Anglistik / Amerikanistik
Geisteswissenschaften Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
Sozialwissenschaften Politik / Verwaltung Politische Systeme
Sozialwissenschaften Politik / Verwaltung Politische Theorie
ISBN-10 0-367-55930-7 / 0367559307
ISBN-13 978-0-367-55930-4 / 9780367559304
Zustand Neuware
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