Shakespeare's returning warriors--and ours / Alan Warren Friedman.
| Author/creator | Friedman, Alan Warren |
| Format | Electronic |
| Publication Info | New York, NY : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2022. |
| Description | 1 online resource |
| Supplemental Content | Full text available from Taylor & Francis eBooks |
| Subjects |
| Series | Routledge studies in Shakespeare |
| Contents | PTSD and the Failure of Re-integration -- Homer, Aeschylus, Shakespeare, and PTSD -- Militarism in Shakespeare's History Plays -- Paradigmatic Returning Warrior Plays: Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Othello, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus -- Dramatic Variants: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Troilus and Cressida -- Hamlet's Warrior Problems -- Returning Warriors, Drones, and PTSD. |
| Abstract | "Shakespeare's Returning Warriors - and Ours takes its primary inspiration from the contemporary U.S. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder crisis in soldiers transitioning from battlefields back into society. It begins by examining how ancient societies sought to ease the return of soldiers in order to minimize PTSD, though the term did not become widely used until the early 1980s. It then considers a dozen or so Shakespearean plays that depict such transitions at the start, focusing on the tragic protagonists and antagonists in paradigmatic "returning warrior" plays, including Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Othello, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, and exploring the psychological and emotional ill-fits that prevent warriors from returning to the status quo ante after battlefield triumphs, or even surviving the psychic demons and moral disequilibrium they unleash on their domestic settings and themselves. It also analyzes the history plays, several comedies, and Hamlet as plays that partly conform to and also significantly deviate from the basic paradigm. The final chapter discusses recent attempts to effect successful transitions, often using Shakespeare's plays as therapy, and depictions of attempts to wage warfare without inducing PTSD. Through the investigation of the tragedies and model returning warrior experiences, Shakespeare's Returning Warriors - and Ours highlights a central and understudied feature of Shakespeare's plays and what they can teach us about PTSD today when it is a wide-spread phenomenon in American society"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Access restriction | Available only to authorized users. |
| Technical details | Mode of access: World Wide Web |
| Source of description | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher. |
| Issued in other form | Print version: Friedman, Alan Warren. Shakespeare's returning warriors--and ours New York, NY : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2022 9781032067841 |
| Genre/form | Electronic books. |
| LCCN | 2021028612 |
| ISBN | 9781003203834 (ebook) |
| ISBN | (hardback) |
| ISBN | (paperback) |