Shakespeare’s Returning Warriors – and Ours takes its primary
inspiration from the contemporary U.S. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD) 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
warrriors 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 widespread
phenomenon in American society.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781000469769
Publisert
2021
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Taylor & Francis
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter