Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.
THE CONVERSION OF OPPOSITES AND TRAGEDY IN 9 §HAKESPEARE S RICHARD 11 IN HIS EARLY HISTORY PLAY RICHARD II, Shakespeare develops a novel idea of tragedy involving the protagonist's intellectual conversion of values into their opposites by defining the dynamic first within and then outside (and so against) the conventional de casibus/Whee1 of Fortune notion of tragedy. On-stage characters, most notably Richard himself, conceive of his ruin as a monarch's typical fall from the position of prosperity to that of adversity, complemented by Bolingbroke's corresponding rise from the nothingness of political exile to the majesty of monarchy. Intellectually and emotionally moving from king to anchorite and back again, from monarch to beg gar and back again, Richard however discovers an inner realm of poetic richness that appears to compensate personally for his decline. We shall see that Pico della Mirandola perhaps best articulated the philosophical doctrine authorizing humankind' s profoundly imaginative capability for the inner conversion and reconversion of antithetical identities. In Richard II, Shakespeare shows how under certain circumstances a capability that Renaissance writers such as Pico considered a vehic1e for dignifying humankind could become the catalyst of tragedy. Richard eventually finds that the rich inner life
Explorations in Renaissance Culture – Brill
Published: Dec 2, 1999
Read and print from thousands of top scholarly journals.
Already have an account? Log in
Bookmark this article. You can see your Bookmarks on your DeepDyve Library.
To save an article, log in first, or sign up for a DeepDyve account if you don’t already have one.
Copy and paste the desired citation format or use the link below to download a file formatted for EndNote
Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
All DeepDyve websites use cookies to improve your online experience. They were placed on your computer when you launched this website. You can change your cookie settings through your browser.