Shakespeare, the Reformation and the Interpreting Self

Reconceptualises Shakespeare's representations of selfhood by drawing on a long history of the interpreting self We share with Shakespeare, it seems, the assumption that to be human is to know through interpretation. This innovative study examines Shakespeare's compelling dramatisations of the interpreting self through the lens of a hermeneutical tradition that spans culture-shaping early modern religious beliefs about human knowing and pivotal philosophical ideas of our age. What is it to be an interpreting self? Shakespeare, the Reformation and the Interpreting Self offers fresh perspectives on critical questions about the self's finitude, agency, motivations, self-knowledge and ethical relation to others; questions that were of great relevance in Shakespeare's England and which continue to frame present-day dilemmas and debates about human experience and human being. Roberta Kwan is an Honorary Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Media, Communication, Creative Arts, Language, and Literature at Macquarie University, Sydney.