The phenomenology of idlers and the revolt of the unique : an analysis of Shakespeare’s creative nothing and its impact upon German philosophy

Abstract

Chapter One commences with a brief exploration of idle literature throughout the course of medieval history starting with the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer. It is suggested throughout this chapter that idle literature becomes transformed with Shakespeare’s plays to suggest other meanings contrary to the medieval conceptions of idlehood. This progression of the idler as a character in literature is analysed in relation to Gregory M. Sadlek’s book, Idleness Working: The Discourse of Love's Labor from Ovid through Chaucer and Gower which studies the history of a love’s labour as a literary tradition that goes all the way back to the ancient times of Ovid up to Chaucer. This analysis continues to evolve as we move progressively into Shakespeare’s impact to the idler and how this affects German theatre and philosophy. Chapter Two places its critical lens into two of Shakespeare’s great tragic plays, namely Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear. These tragedies are then studied alongside German philosophic texts in the Hegelian era. Since Hegelian philosophy and Shakespeare are both vast subjects, I will relegate my attention to one area of study. We will study idlers in Shakespeare and how this may have affected some German philosophers in their understanding of the idlers. Shakespeare’s King Lear to the idea of the idler’s art of doing nothing. King Lear will be seen as a play that transcends the limitations of Macbeth and Hamlet when it comes the theory of idlehood and the idea of the creative nothing that comes from Hegelian philosophers. In Chapter Three, the focus shifts to another character in Shakespeare, the idle character of Falstaff as he appears in Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part II and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Falstaff is studied in relation to Samuel Johnson’s The Idler and the philosophies of Hegel, Feuerbach, Edgar Bauer and Max Stirner. In Chapter Four there is an attempt to develop a strong connection between Max Stirner’s idea of the egoist and the character of Iago. In this Chapter, we study how critics like A.C. Bradley view Iago as an egoist and how Max Stirner’s The Ego and Its Own is the perfect book to understand what drives a character like Iago. The conclusion of this dissertation simply advocates for even greater possibilities of research towards idle literature beyond Shakespeare and German philosophy. It analyzes the potential of studying this field as if it were universal across all of history, all of language and all of literature.