Jan H. Blits's Books

New Heaven, New Earth

Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra

By: Jan H. Blits

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New Heaven, New Earth

Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra

By: Jan H. Blits

Patterned after his previous books on Shakespeare's plays, Jan H. Blits's New Heaven, New Earth is a scene-by-scene, line-by-line philosophical study of Antony and Cleopatra. Combining close attention to detail with interpretive breadth, Blits approaches Shakespeare as a first-rank thinker who, master of his own thought and writing, produced plays and poetry with an infinitely conscious art, like any commonly recognized philosophical poet. Treating the play as a fully coherent whole, Blits shows that Antony and Cleopatra, as much a history play as a love story, depicts the transition from the pagan to the Christian world_from the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Republic and the decline of the pagan gods to the emergence of the Roman Empire and the conditions giving rise to Christianity. Instead of being organized thematically, New Heaven, New Earth follows the play from beginning to end, closely examining Shakespeare's text on its own terms and not on the terms of modern literary theory. Using this approach, Blits draws significant and insightful conclusions that will satisfy the interests of scholars of politics, literature, and history alike.

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Page Count

240

Publisher

Lexington Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0739138251

ISBN 13

9780739138250

Telling, Turning Moments in the Classical Political World

By: Jan H. Blits

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Telling, Turning Moments in the Classical Political World

By: Jan H. Blits

Turning, Telling Moments in the Classical Political World examines developments in the classical political world which are both turning and telling moments. All the moments--from Theseus's founding of Athens to Augustus's establishment of the Principate--possess the double character of being turning points and revealing fundamental aspects of the ancient political world. While most books on ancient history are chiefly concerned with questions of literary sources and historical accuracy, this book deals with the significance of the facts and reports themselves. Blits treats the ancient histories as works of reflection rather than works of research. Instead of focusing on whether, or how, the ancient historians meet the professional standards of present-day historiography, Blits reveals the way they themselves understand-and intend us to understand-the ancient world.

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Page Count

186

Publisher

Lexington Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

073916449X

ISBN 13

9780739164495

The Soul of Athens

Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

By: Jan H. Blits

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The Soul of Athens

Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

By: Jan H. Blits

The Soul of Athens: Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" studies Shakespeare's portrayal of the founding of Athens through a close reading of one of the Bard's most memorable comedies. Coupling careful attention to detail with interpretive breadth, The Soul of Athens examines the nature of love, the natural doubleness of human thinking and the ambiguous relation of image and reality, as well as patriarchy and democracy, and heroic and moral virtue.

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228

Publisher

Lexington Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0739106538

ISBN 13

9780739106532

Spirit, Soul, and City

Shakespeare's Coriolanus

By: Jan H. Blits

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Spirit, Soul, and City

Shakespeare's Coriolanus

By: Jan H. Blits

Spirit, Soul, and City offers a new reading of Coriolanus, Shakespeare's most political play and the last of his great tragedies. Portraying the founding of the Roman republic and the life and soul of its legendary warrior, Coriolanus, the play brings to light not only the hidden working of Rome's mixed regime but the inherent tragic tensions in the soul's spirited tendency to strive to go beyond itself in order to be true to itself. Distinguished scholar Jan H. Blits provides a fresh interpretation of this rich, complex, and often perplexing play, combining meticulous detail and insightful breadth. Proceeding line-by-line through the play, this book reaches its conclusions by closely examining Shakespeare's text--his plot, characters, language, structure, allusions, puzzles, and other devices.

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Page Count

260

Publisher

Lexington Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0739115421

ISBN 13

9780739115428

Rome and the Spirit of Caesar

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

By: Jan H. Blits

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Rome and the Spirit of Caesar

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

By: Jan H. Blits

Rome and the Spirit of Caesar, providing a fresh interpretation of Julius Caesar, is a thorough examination of Shakespeare’s presentation of the final throes of republican Rome’s political decay and demise and the rise of Caesarism. As in his previous studies of Shakespeare’s plays, Blits, pursuing his distinctive approach, follows Caesar through, scene by scene, speech by speech, line by line, reaching his conclusions by closely examining Shakespeare’s text. Approaching the play as a coherent whole, he examines the whole in the light of its parts and the parts in the light of the whole. Since each presupposes the other, he considers the whole and its parts together. He carefully relates the play’s details to its major themes and grounds the themes in, and supports them by, the details. While intruding no literary theory on the play, Blits brings out the historical and perennial political substance that Shakespeare deliberately put into it. He shows that Caesar is a work of historical poetry, shaped by Shakespeare’s mastery of the Roman histories and the Hellenistic philosophies bearing directly on his subject. Topics include the love of honor and fame, heroic ambition and glory, virtue and honor, civic strife, political murder, the role of political oratory, public versus private interests, Caesarism, the decay of liberty, loyalty, demagoguery, luxury, spiritedness, superstition, Stoicism and Epicureanism, manliness, friendship, moral intimidation, political imprudence, foreign and civil war, universal empire, and the advent of Christianity.

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Page Count

195

Publisher

Lexington Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

149852527X

ISBN 13

9781498525275

Deadly Thought

Hamlet and the Human Soul

By: Jan H. Blits

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Deadly Thought

Hamlet and the Human Soul

By: Jan H. Blits

The human soul is for pre-modern philosophers the cause of both thinking and life. This double aspect of the soul, which makes man a rational animal, expresses itself above all in human action. Deadly Thought: "Hamlet" and the Human Soul traces Hamlet's famous inability to act to his inability to hold together these twin aspects of the soul. Combining careful attention to detail and interpretive breadth, noted scholar Jan H. Blits deftly illustrates how Hamlet collapses life into thought, and moral action into stage acting, and ultimately comes to see his own life as a stage play. Hamlet, the book demonstrates, epitomizes the intellectualism of the Renaissance and the modern age it began, and so becomes tragedy's first self-conscious protagonist, signaling the end of ancient tragedy. Erudite, innovative, and lively, Deadly Thought is a ground-breaking contribution that will appeal to Shakespeare scholars, political theorists, historians of philosophy, literary theorists and anyone interested in a truly fresh interpretation of this classic work.

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Page Count

420

Publisher

Lexington Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

073910215X

ISBN 13

9780739102152

The Heart of Rome

Ancient Rome's Political Culture

By: Jan H. Blits

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The Heart of Rome

Ancient Rome's Political Culture

By: Jan H. Blits

The essays in this book examine the political activities and institutions of pre-Imperial Rome in conjunction with the habits of the hearts and the minds of the Romans. Relying on the writings of ancient authors, the essays analyze significant political developments and events. They attempt to draw out the meaning of what the authors say and impose no theory on the ancient writings. Nor do they pursue the methodological techniques of contemporary historiography. While avoiding such common present-day anachronisms, they take their guidance directly from the ancient historians themselves and examine their understanding of Rome’s political history and culture. Harking back to the ancient view that a political culture or regime is both a city’s form of government and its way of life, the essays, trying to be true to the full character of Roman political life, seek to understand the political activities and the souls of the Romans, and to understand each in the light of the other.

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Page Count

201

Publisher

Lexington Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0739189212

ISBN 13

9780739189214

The End of the Ancient Republic

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

By: Jan H. Blits

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The End of the Ancient Republic

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

By: Jan H. Blits

While recent criticism of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar has stressed the corruption of both the common people and the Republic's enemies within the patrician class, this book argues that at the core of the play lies the less obvious but more important corruption of the regime's leading defenders, particularly Brutus.

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Page Count

108

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

0847677605

ISBN 13

9780847677603

The Tragedy of Macbeth

By: William Shakespeare,Jan H. Blits

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The Tragedy of Macbeth

By: William Shakespeare,Jan H. Blits

The fourth in a series of editions of Shakespeare’s most political and history-soaked plays, this Macbeth offers copious aids to understanding the play not found in any other edition. By attending to the play’s medieval Scottish setting in a way that rival editors have never matched—when they have even dug beyond the early seventeenth-century context in which it was produced—Jan H. Blits’s edition richly rewards readers left unsatisfied by “decodings” of the play’s supposed allusions to the politics of early modern England who wish to look deeper. In doing so, it opens the text for readers to encounter, in new ways, the play’s historical, political, and psychological significance.

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Page Count

251

Publisher

Hackett Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1585109967

ISBN 13

9781585109968

The Tragedy of Macbeth

By: William Shakespeare,Jan H. Blits

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The Tragedy of Macbeth

By: William Shakespeare,Jan H. Blits

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251

Publisher

Hackett Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1585109967

ISBN 13

9781585109968

Spirit, Soul, and City

Shakespeare's Coriolanus

By: Jan H. Blits

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Spirit, Soul, and City

Shakespeare's Coriolanus

By: Jan H. Blits

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Page Count

260

Publisher

Lexington Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0739115421

ISBN 13

9780739115428

The Soul of Athens

Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

By: Jan H. Blits

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The Soul of Athens

Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

By: Jan H. Blits

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Page Count

228

Publisher

Lexington Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0739106538

ISBN 13

9780739106532

Deadly Thought

Hamlet and the Human Soul

By: Jan H. Blits

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Deadly Thought

Hamlet and the Human Soul

By: Jan H. Blits

The human soul is for pre-modern philosophers the cause of both thinking and life. This double aspect of the soul, which makes man a rational animal, expresses itself above all in human action. Deadly Thought: 'Hamlet' and the Human Soul traces Hamlet's famous inability to act to his inability to hold together these twin aspects of the soul. Combining careful attention to detail and interpretive breadth, noted scholar Jan H. Blits deftly illustrates how Hamlet collapses life into thought, and moral action into stage acting, and ultimately comes to see his own life as a stage play. Hamlet, the book demonstrates, epitomizes the intellectualism of the Renaissance and the modern age it began, and so becomes tragedy's first self-conscious protagonist, signaling the end of ancient tragedy. Erudite, innovative, and lively, Deadly Thought is a ground-breaking contribution that will appeal to Shakespeare scholars, political theorists, historians of philosophy, literary theorists and anyone interested in a truly fresh interpretation of this classic work.

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Page Count

420

Publisher

Lexington Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0739153919

ISBN 13

9780739153918

Rome and the Spirit of Caesar

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

By: Jan H. Blits

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Rome and the Spirit of Caesar

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

By: Jan H. Blits

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Page Count

195

Publisher

Lexington Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

149852527X

ISBN 13

9781498525275

New Heaven, New Earth

Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra

By: Jan H. Blits

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New Heaven, New Earth

Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra

By: Jan H. Blits

Patterned after his previous books on Shakespeare's plays, Jan H. Blits's New Heaven, New Earth is a scene-by-scene, line-by-line philosophical study of Antony and Cleopatra. Combining close attention to detail with interpretive breadth, Blits approaches Shakespeare as a first-rank thinker who, master of his own thought and writing, produced plays and poetry with an infinitely conscious art, like any commonly recognized philosophical poet. Treating the play as a fully coherent whole, Blits shows that Antony and Cleopatra, as much a history play as a love story, depicts the transition from the pagan to the Christian world--from the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Republic and the decline of the pagan gods to the emergence of the Roman Empire and the conditions giving rise to Christianity. Instead of being organized thematically, New Heaven, New Earth follows the play from beginning to end, closely examining Shakespeare's text on its own terms and not on the terms of modern literary theory. Using this approach, Blits draws significant and insightful conclusions that will satisfy the interests of scholars of politics, literature, and history alike.

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Age

Page Count

246

Publisher

Lexington Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0739138235

ISBN 13

9780739138236

The End of the Ancient Republic

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

By: Jan H. Blits

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The End of the Ancient Republic

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

By: Jan H. Blits

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

108

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

0847677605

ISBN 13

9780847677603

Book's by Jan H. Blits

New Heaven, New Earth

New Heaven, New Earth

Telling, Turning Moments in the Classical Political World

Telling, Turning Moments in the Classical Political World

The Soul of Athens

The Soul of Athens

Spirit, Soul, and City

Spirit, Soul, and City

Rome and the Spirit of Caesar

Rome and the Spirit of Caesar

Deadly Thought

Deadly Thought

The Heart of Rome

The Heart of Rome

The End of the Ancient Republic

The End of the Ancient Republic

The Tragedy of Macbeth

The Tragedy of Macbeth

The Tragedy of Macbeth

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Spirit, Soul, and City

Spirit, Soul, and City

The Soul of Athens

The Soul of Athens

Deadly Thought

Deadly Thought

Rome and the Spirit of Caesar

Rome and the Spirit of Caesar

New Heaven, New Earth

New Heaven, New Earth

The End of the Ancient Republic

The End of the Ancient Republic

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