My research interests grow out of my teaching experience, especially as that has focused on Renaissance Poetry, Shakespearean Drama, and the tradition of Literary and Rhetorical Theory descending from Aristotle. My current project—a book-length study with the working titleShakespeare and the Name of Action—takes its bearings from a famous remark by Hamlet about the way great enterprises can “lose the name of action.”
I am investigating what counts as action and what counts against it in selected plays by Shakespeare. The first section, “Pathos-as-Praxis,” starts from a short paragraph in Aristotle’sPoetics, which concentrates on pathos or suffering, the bedrock of tragedy, and which paradoxically asserts that a pathos is a praxis, an action. Part II, “The Workings of Conscience,” considers the antimony of conscience and action that is central to Hamlet’s meditation and explores the ways in which conscience may work to re-shape rather than undermine the name of action. Part III, “Multiple Plots and One Action,” focuses on the question of motive, or motives, and the extent to which any one character may or may not dominate an action, the extent to which currents of action impinge on one another, with the possibility of changing their ‘name’ in the process. Part IV, “Ekplexis or the End of Poetry,” explores the role of wonder or astonishment in defining and delimiting an action, cleansing or purifying and, finally allowing its name to be not lost but seen from a new perspective.
