Innocent Victims: Poetic Injustice in Shakespearean Tragedy

R.S. White

Dec 2000 · A&C Black

About this ebook

This is a revised version of the book which was privately published by the author in 1982. At the time, the book was widely welcomed by Shakespearean scholars as a trenchant, scholarly and highly orginal contribution to the field of Shakespearean studies. The book's argument is that a full response to Shakespearean tragedy has to take account of the fate of the victims as well as of the tragic heroesl and this thesis is illustrated and developed by a consideration of Lavinia, Lucrece and the children in Richard III, Macbeth and King John; and to the thee principal Shakespearean tragic victims, Ophelia, Desemona and Cordelia.

About the author

R. S. White is Australian Professorial Fellow, Emeritus Winthrop Professor of English at The University of Western Australia, and Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions 1100-1800. Among his other books are Natural Law in English Renaissance Literature (1996), Natural Rights and the Birth of Romanticism in the 1790s (2008), Pacifism in English Poetry: Minstrels of Peace (2008) and John Keats: A Literary Life (2010) which has been reissued in paperback. He is a past President of the Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association and a Fellow of the Australian Humanities Academy.