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No one yet has managed to be post-Shakespearean.

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[Lear] is the universal image of the unwisdom and destructiveness of paternal love at its most ineffectual, implacably persuaded of its own benignity,...more

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A play that takes as its burden the meaning of self-consciousness may hint that inner freedom can be attained only when the protagonist can separate h...more

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There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in whic...more

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There is no God but God, and his name is William Shakespeare.

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No one has yet managed to be post-Shakespearean.

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To deprive the derelicts of hope is right, and to sustain them in their illusory "pipe dreams" is right also.

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Literary criticism, as I attempt to practice it, is in the first place 'literary', which is to say personal and passionate. It is not philosophy, poli...more

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I define influence simply as literary love, tempered by defense. The defenses vary from poet to poet. But the overwhelming presence of love is vital t...more