Book description
Raphael Lyne addresses a crucial Shakespearean question: why do characters in the grip of emotional crises deliver such extraordinarily beautiful and ambitious speeches? How do they manage to be so inventive when they are perplexed? Their dense, complex, articulate speeches at intensely dramatic moments are often seen as psychological -…
- Coming soon!
Why read it?
1 author picked Shakespeare, Rhetoric and Cognition as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Renaissance writers were trained in rhetoric: how to use language to work through a problem or convey a state of mind.
Today, theories of cognition explore how linguistic devices relate to processes in the brain; for example, metaphor replicates how the mind understands something by associating or comparing it with something else. Lyne’s radical innovation is to bring together these historical and contemporary frameworks for understanding thought and language.
He explores points of contact between Renaissance rhetorical theories and present-day cognitive theories, then applies his insights to analyse works by Shakespeare. This offers a wholly fresh approach to understanding how…
From Helen's list on The best books on how Shakespeare thought about the mind.
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