Shakespeare and Wisdom - by Unhae Park Langis & Julia Reinhard Lupton

About the Book

Explores how Shakespeare uses global wisdom literatures to encourage spiritual and moral growth and the arts of living in a connected world

Book Synopsis

This volume interweaves Shakespeare's wisdom with ancient spiritual practices and the insights of a post-secular age in order to explore a transhistorical space of sapient knowing and living. Pursuing the delight of heart, soul and understanding in the synaesthetic experience of theatre and the meditative space of poetry, sapiential Shakespeare explores knowledge, love, beauty, nature, will and power in conversation with multiple wisdom traditions, tapping into a global sensus communis rooted in energetic knowing-with. This collection of essays begins in the Mediterranean with classical, biblical and Egyptian wisdom, moves to the East to consider Sufi and Buddhist wisdom and then turns to the West to reflect on Indigenous science and ways of knowing. Sharing a common root in oikos, meaning home, the ecumenical and the ecological converge in an embodied ethics and politics of care premised in an ecological rather than ego-logical way of being.

Review Quotes

This collection views Shakespeare as a curate of wisdom traditions. Inviting and yet unapologetic, its authors reimagine Shakespeare criticism as an ecumenical conversation about the art of living held between ancient voices and today's post-secular age. It is a book that warrants not responding to but thinking with.--Matthew J. Smith, Hildegard College