Shakespeare's Imagined Persons: The Psychology of Role-Playing and Acting (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780333634486)

Challenging our understanding of ideas about psychology in Shakespeare's time, Shakespeare's Imagined Persons proposes we should view his characters as imagined persons. A new reading of B.F. Skinner's radical behaviourism brings out how - contrary to the impression he created - Skinner ascribes an important role in human behaviour to cognitive activity. Using this analysis, Peter Murray demonstrates the consistency of radical behaviourism with the psychology of character formation and acting in writers from Plato to Shakespeare - an approach little explored in the current debates about subjectivity in Elizabethan culture. Murray also shows that radical behaviourism can explain the phenomena observed in modern studies of acting and social role-playing. Drawing on these analyses of earlier and modern psychology, Murray goes on to reveal the dynamics of Shakespeare's characterizations of Hamlet, Prince Hal, Rosalind, and Perdita in a fascinating new light.

Author: P. Murray
ISBN-10: 0333634489
ISBN-13: 9780333634486
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Language: English
Published: 05/10/1996
Pages: 256
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.08lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.75d