Of Human Kindness: What Shakespeare Teaches Us About Empathy

By: Paula Marantz Cohen

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis: An award-winning scholar and teacher explores how Shakespeare&’s greatest characters were built on a learned sense of empathy While exploring Shakespeare&’s plays with her students, Paula Marantz Cohen discovered that teaching and discussing his plays unlocked a surprising sense of compassion in the classroom. In this short and illuminating book, she shows how Shakespeare&’s genius lay with his ability to arouse empathy, even when his characters exist in alien contexts and behave in reprehensible ways. Cohen takes her readers through a selection of Shakespeare&’s most famous plays, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and The Merchant of Venice, to demonstrate the ways in which Shakespeare thought deeply and clearly about how we treat &“the other.&” Cohen argues that only through close reading of Shakespeare can we fully appreciate his empathetic response to race, class, gender, and age. Wise, eloquent, and thoughtful, this book is a forceful argument for literature&’s power to champion what is best in us.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
Book Size:: 176 Pages
ISBN-13:: 9780300258325
Publisher:: Yale University Press
Date of Addition:: 02/09/21
Copyrighted By:: Paula Marantz Cohen
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Drama, Plays and Theater, Language Arts, Law, Legal Issues and Ethics, Philosophy
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.