Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 6 - Communities

  • from Part I - Contexts
  • Edited by Katharine A. Craik, Oxford Brookes University
  • Book:
    Shakespeare and Emotion
    Published online:
    01 October 2020
    Print publication:
    22 October 2020, pp 94-108

  • Summary

    The first three acts of Julius Caesar exemplify Shakespeare’s interest in depicting the material outcomes of affect and cognition within a densely realised world where social intimacy forms the basis for political decision-making. This essay concerns moments of inter-subjective inference when characters reveal the conditions of affective community. It argues that Shakespeare is interested in how patrician Romans think they know one another deeply because they share the self-conscious, public history central to romanitas. He shows us how the affective community thus formed is destroyed by factionalism and metaphorical language when metaphor replaces the practical language of social knowing and participates in the breakdown of community. This power of metaphor becomes clearest in 2.1 when Brutus decides to kill Caesar by comparing him to an adder. The metaphor shows social cognition betraying its own best uses when Brutus metaphorically casts out a known, loved fellow being from the human community in order to make him politically a thing you feel obliged to kill.