Of Human Kindness Audiobook By Paula Marantz Cohen cover art

Of Human Kindness

What Shakespeare Teaches Us About Empathy

Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime
Try for $0.00
More purchase options
Buy for $14.66

Buy for $14.66

While exploring Shakespeare's plays with her students, Paula Marantz Cohen discovered that teaching and discussing his plays unlocked a surprising sense of compassion in the classroom. In this short and illuminating book, she shows how Shakespeare's genius lay with his ability to arouse empathy, even when his characters exist in alien contexts and behave in reprehensible ways.

Cohen takes listeners through a selection of Shakespeare's most famous plays, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and The Merchant of Venice, to demonstrate the ways in which Shakespeare thought deeply and clearly about how we treat "the other". Cohen argues that only through close reading of Shakespeare can we fully appreciate his empathetic response to race, class, gender, and age. Wise, eloquent, and thoughtful, this book is a forceful argument for literature's power to champion what is best in us.

©2021 Paula Marantz Cohen (P)2021 Tantor
Literary History & Criticism Ethics & Morality Compassion Shakespeare Philosophy Royalty Shakespeare Criticism
No reviews yet