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- Title
HERMIONE'S SOPHISM: ORDINARINESS AND THEATRICALITY IN THE WINTER'S TALE.
- Authors
WOLFE, JUDITH
- Abstract
This essay queries and extends Stanley Cavell's reading of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale by a close investigation of the character and language of Hermione. Far from being merely a passive victim of Leontes's madness (or, in Cavellian terms, "skepticism"), I argue, Hermione is an active contributor to the disintegration of their relationship by "sophistically" refusing to distinguish between language as conversation and language as mere play. The play's conspicuously metatheatrical engagement with He rmione's (as Leontes's) repudiation of vulnerability shows that the threat of "theatricalization" or sophism cannot (as Cavell or Rush Rhees might wish) simply be excised but m ust be integrated in ordinary relationships.
- Subjects
LOGICAL fallacies; ORDINARIES; QUERIES (Authorship); CAVELL, Stanley, 1926-2018; WINTER'S Tale, The (Play : Shakespeare); GRANGER, Hermione (Fictional character)
- Publication
Philosophy & Literature, 2015, Vol 39, Issue 1A, pA83
- ISSN
0190-0013
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1353/phl.2015.0038