New Heaven, New Earth

Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra

By (author) Jan H. Blits

Not available to order

Publication date:

16 June 2009

Length of book:

238 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739138250

Patterned after his previous books on Shakespeare's plays, Jan H. Blits's New Heaven, New Earth is a scene-by-scene, line-by-line philosophical study of Antony and Cleopatra. Combining close attention to detail with interpretive breadth, Blits approaches Shakespeare as a first-rank thinker who, master of his own thought and writing, produced plays and poetry with an infinitely conscious art, like any commonly recognized philosophical poet. Treating the play as a fully coherent whole, Blits shows that Antony and Cleopatra, as much a history play as a love story, depicts the transition from the pagan to the Christian world_from the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Republic and the decline of the pagan gods to the emergence of the Roman Empire and the conditions giving rise to Christianity. Instead of being organized thematically, New Heaven, New Earth follows the play from beginning to end, closely examining Shakespeare's text on its own terms and not on the terms of modern literary theory. Using this approach, Blits draws significant and insightful conclusions that will satisfy the interests of scholars of politics, literature, and history alike.
I had regarded myself as quite familiar with Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, a play of which I am inordinately fond, but reading Jan Blits's careful explication de texte showed me how much I had been missing. The work is a masterful reading of Shakespeare's great play, practically line by line, bringing out the richness of the poet's language and thought.... Blits's careful line-by-line interpretation of the play demonstrates how Shakespeare brings to life this transformation of politicaland religious life. All of its aspects, from the most political to the most personal, are carefully examined and illustrated. The reader gains an enriched understanding of the remarkable tableau Shakespeare has painted of this crucial period in the history of the West.