On the Threshold

The first book-length study of hospitality in Shakespeare

Offers innovative literary analysis of canonical plays including The Merchant of Venice, providing a fresh interpretation of the stranger question
Engages with different theoretical approaches to hospitality in order to read Shakespeare as a dramatist of ethical encounter
Reconsiders the early modern interest in limits, thresholds, and boundaries, showing the significance to guest and host relationships in the drama
Assembles a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary methodology by drawing on major thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Anne Dufourmantelle, Gaston Bachelard and Michel Serres

In this critical analysis, Sophie E. Battell examines hospitality in Shakespeare's plays. By drawing on literary theory, modern philosophy, and anthropology as well as early modern scientific and religious texts, the book advances our understanding of Shakespeare as a dramatist concerned with the ethical questions at stake in encounters between guests and hosts of various kinds.

The close readings and scholarly interventions presented here reconceive the plays in terms of a poetics of hospitality while arguing for an expansive, far-reaching vision of what it means to be open to the world and welcoming of others. Moving from the levels of subjectivity, the body, and the senses to architecture, economics, legal discourse, and the natural environment, On the Threshold not only makes important contributions to Shakespeare studies but forges new connections between Renaissance literary scholarship and contemporary debates on the politics of migrants and refugees.