Julius Caesar | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 24 pages of analysis & critique of Julius Caesar.

Julius Caesar | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 24 pages of analysis & critique of Julius Caesar.
This section contains 6,431 words
(approx. 22 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Robin Headlam Wells

SOURCE: Wells, Robin Headlam. “Julius Caesar, Machiavelli, and the Uses of History.” Shakespeare Survey 55 (2002): 209-18.

In the following essay, Wells claims that in Julius Caesar Shakespeare depicted a Machiavellian view of politics and history.

Why did Shakespeare use stories from the Graeco-Roman world? Machiavelli went to Roman history because he believed that Livy's narratives provided political lessons that could be applied to the modern world. It has traditionally been supposed that Shakespeare dramatized stories from Plutarch and other historians for similar reasons. For the new ‘politic’ historiographers, and, it used to be generally assumed, for Shakespeare as well, the importance of ancient history lay in its ability to illuminate modern events.1 In recent years these assumptions have been challenged by materialist and postmodern scholars who have argued that the supposedly essentialist view of humanity underpinning this rational historiography is an invention of pre-theoretical literary scholarship. Shakespeare, it is...

(read more)

This section contains 6,431 words
(approx. 22 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Robin Headlam Wells
Copyrights
Gale
Critical Essay by Robin Headlam Wells from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.