Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden : The Construction of Family Values in Early Modern Culture

In a harsh, uncaring world the family is valued as a source of warmth and stability. At the same time, we are increasingly compelled to recognize that families can be oppressive both physically and emotionally. Now for the first time in paperback, Catherine Belsey's richly illustrated account of Shakespeare's plays, in conjunction with early modern images of Adam and Eve, locates the construction of family values in cultural history and politics. She shows the pleasures and anxieties generated in the period by the domestication of desire, parental love and cruelty and the relations between siblings - and discusses how Shakespeare's plays explore these themes. Showing that the loving family was an object of propaganda then as now, Belsey points to unexpected affinities between the world of early modern England and the present day. She demonstrates that political and moral claims that the family makes us whole -- as well as fears that it can be abusive -- are not new, but also dominate the early modern construction of the family. Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden expertly traces representations of the family in three related fields: Shakespeare's plays, the Reformation story of Adam and Eve as founders of the first nuclear family, and the visual imagery that decorates the cultural artifacts of the period, including furniture, tapestries, and tomb sculpture. Detailed readings of the plays reveal a wealth of reformation on the domestication of desire in marriage, parental love and cruelty, and sibling rivalry. Richly illustrated and written with perception and wit, the book is a major work of both literary criticism and cultural history Front Matter....Pages i-xvii Introduction: Reading Cultural History....Pages 1-25 Desire in the Golden World: ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ and ‘As You Like It’....Pages 27-54 Marriage: Imogen’s Bedchamber....Pages 55-83 Parenthood: Hermione’s Statue....Pages 85-127 Sibling Rivalry: ‘Hamlet’ and the First Murder....Pages 129-174 Postscript: Passion and Interpretation....Pages 175-177 Back Matter....Pages 179-203 In the Rhymney Valley, 15 miles north of Cardiff, just off the main road to Merthyr Tydfil, stands the manor house of Llancaiach Fawr.