Univ., Diss.--Michigan. / Includes bibliographical references and index.

Univ., Diss. u.d.T.: Biewer, Carolin: "All hearts in love use their own tongues" - elisabethanische Psychologie und die Sprache(n) der Liebenden in Shakespeares Komödien--Heidelberg, 2005.

Teilw. zugl.: Erlangen-Nürnberg, Universiẗat, Diss., 2003.

Zugl.: Trier, Univ., Diss., 2008

The topic of the thesis is the connection of the renowned bard and writer William Shakespeare with the Law. The thesis points out some of the most interesting legal remarks, which can be found during the course of the study of the Shakespeare's texts. The aim of the thesis is to broaden the knowledge of the depth of Shakespeare's plays, romances and sonnets and their legal connotation that never ceases to amaze both the general public, and the readers of legal education. The thesis is prefaced by the treatise regarding the connection of the law with the literature through the Law and Literature movement. The following chapter notes reasons why is it appropriate to study literary texts for the practice of legal professions, namely in the connection to the courts' decisions. Decisions of the US Supreme Court and the Czech Constitutional Court are mentioned in the thesis. In the following lines the author notes the issues one might face while translating the Shakespeare's remarks, especially those of legal connotation ; and mentions some of Shakespeare's law-related remarks. A notable portion of the thesis deals with three plays and their law-related contents. In the passage regarding the comedy Measure for Measure, Shakespeare's interest in a topic that is still actual nowadays is pointed out - the...

Habilitationsschrift--Freiburg i.B. / Includes bibliographical references and index.

Zugl.: München, Universiẗat, Diss., 2008.

This thesis re-examines Shakespeare’s creation of tragic character through the concept of ‘arrivals’. What arrives is not an ‘individual’ but what I call a ‘subject’, which is a diffused dramatic process of arriving, rather than a self-contained entity that arrives in a final form. Not all characters are ‘subjects’. A subject only arrives through dramatic ‘events’ that rupture the existing structures of the play-world and the play-text. The generators of these irruptions are found equally in the happenings of plot and in changes of poetic intensity and form. The ‘subject’ is thus a supra- individual irruption that configures new forms of language, structure, and action. Accordingly, I explain why scrupulous historicism’s need for nameable continuums is incommensurate to the irruptive quality of Shakespearean character. The concepts of ‘process’, ‘subject’ and ‘event’ are informed by a variety of thinkers, most notably the contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou. Badiou develops an ‘evental’ model of subjectivity in which the subject emerges in fidelity to a ‘truth- event’, which breaks into a situation from its ‘void’. Also important is the process- orientated philosophy of Bergson and Whitehead, which stresses that an entity is not a stable substance but a process of becoming. The underlying connection between the philosophers I embrace – also including the likes of Žižek, Kierkegaard, Latour, Benjamin, and Christian thinkers such as Saint Paul and Luther – is that they establish a creative alternative to the deadlock between treating the subject as either a stable substance (humanism) or a decentred product of its place in the world (postmodernism). The subject is not a pre-existing entity but something that comes to be. It is not reducible to its cultural and linguistic circumstances but is precisely what exceeds those circumstances. Such an excessive creativity is what gives rise to Shakespeare’s subjects and, I argue, underpins the continuing force of his drama. But it also produces profound dangers. In Shakespeare, ‘events’ consistently expose subjects to uncertainty, catastrophe, and horror. And these dangers imperil both the subject and the relationship between Shakespeare and the affirmative philosophy of the event.

Zugl.: Düsseldorf, University, Diss.