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Chapter 23 - Confusion

Cymbeline, The Merchant of Venice, The Winter’s Tale

from Part II - Emotions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2020

Katharine A. Craik
Affiliation:
Oxford Brookes University
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Summary

What is confusion? And what does confusion have to do with emotion? This chapter argues that Shakespeare’s depictions of confusion elucidate the care with which he ties affective states and bodily conditions together with rational and intellectual processes. Confusion is a state that grips Shakespeare’s characters in their entirety. Deeper still, Shakespeare’s representations of confusion reveal one of the baseline assumptions in his understanding of human emotional life: no affect, passion, or emotion can ever appear on its own, in isolation. In Shakespeare’s view, feeling always involves mixture and mingling – that is, some degree of confusion. Tracing the contours of a philosophical tradition that illuminates the limitations and affordances of confusion, this chapter explores Shakespeare’s depiction of confusion in such plays as Othello, The Merchant of Venice, and Winter’s Tale, but focuses on Cymbeline, a play in which the lived, felt state of confusion takes centre stage.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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