University Press of America
Pages: 300
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9⅛
978-0-7618-4137-1 • Paperback • March 2010 • $62.99 • (£48.00)
978-0-7618-4893-6 • eBook • March 2010 • $59.50 • (£46.00)
François-Xavier Gleyzon is assistant professor of English at the American University of Beirut. His publications include "Christine Buci-Glucksmann: Shakespeare and the Archaeology of Shadows," along with articles on English Renaissance literature in relation to visual arts. His current research focuses on Shakespeare, religion, and terror.
Chapter 1 List of Illustrations
Chapter 2 Acknowledgements
Chapter 3 Introduction
Part 4 Part One: A Shakespearean Gaze at the Snail
Chapter 5 1. Introducing the Snail
Chapter 6 2. From the Hovel to the Shell
Chapter 7 3. Mutatis Mutandis I: From the Snail to the Worm
Chapter 8 4. The Decadence of the Garden Snail
Chapter 9 5. Mutatis Mutandis II: From the Worm to the Shell
Chapter 10 6. The Resurrection Shell
Chapter 11 7. The Virgin Mary's Snail
Chapter 12 8. Opening up the Spiral Quest
Part 13 Part Two: The Renascent Spiral: Dazzling-Darkening
Chapter 14 1. Introduction: Seeing and Thinking Blindly
Chapter 15 2. Dazzling-Darkening in King Lear
Chapter 16 3. Conclusion: The Eye-Spiral: Shakespeare - Charcot - Dürer
Part 17 Part Three: Under the Eye of Gorgô or the Medusa-Snail
Chapter 18 1. Recapitulation and Re: Capitulation
Chapter 19 2. Theoretical and Aporetic Considerations
Chapter 20 3. Sleep and Macbeth
Chapter 21 4. Return to King Lear: The Medusa-Snail
Chapter 22 Bibliography
Shakespeare's Spiral takes part in the new attention to the Creature, the Thing, and forms of life in literary, philosophical, and iconographic studies of Renaissance matter. In this witty and moving book, Gleyzon twists natural history, biopolitics, and the ecology of signs into a single spiral of incarnate thought, presenting the [snail] as both an object and a method for contemporary engagement with major and minor life forms of the past and present.
— Julia Reinhard Lupton, The University of California, Irvine
The
Spiral is at once beautiful and rare.
— Juliet Fleming, New York University and the University of Cambridge
An evocative, genuinely exploratory study - rangy and surprising. Gleyzon combines an extraordinary range of theoretical reference, an instinct for the improbable and illuminating conjunction - Charcot and Dürer, western thought and the gastropod - with a refined attentiveness to the poetics of text and language.
— Christopher Pye, Williams College
Shakespeare’s Spiral deserves to be read by scholars in and outside of the Shakespearean ‘‘shellter’’ (p. xix). The book invites critics to come out of their methodological shells; for this reason perhaps—in the words of an early review of Catch-22—it will prove to be 'a dazzling performance that will outrage nearly as many readers as it delights'.
— English Studies