Shakespeare's Big Men : Tragedy and the Problem of Resentment

Shakespeare’s Big Men examines five Shakespearean tragedies – Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and Coriolanus – through the lens of generative anthropology and the insights of its founder, Eric Gans. Generative anthropology’s theory of the origins of human society explains the social function of tragedy: to defer our resentment against the “big men” who dominate society by letting us first identify with the tragic protagonist and his resentment, then allowing us to repudiate the protagonist’s resentful rage and achieve theatrical catharsis.

Drawing on this hypothesis, Richard van Oort offers inspired readings of Shakespeare’s plays and their representations of desire, resentment, guilt, and evil. His analysis revives the universal spirit in Shakespearean criticism, illustrating how the plays can serve as a way to understand the ethical dilemma of resentment and discover within ourselves the nature of the human experience.

“Shakespeare's Big Men is an outstanding and original work of scholarship. The application of Generative Anthropology to an interpretation of five of the major plays is revelatory. The use of these ideas about the fundamental drivers of human nature, combined with an acute sensitivity to poetic, dramatic, and psychological detail, and an engaging writing style, make for a riveting commentary. Van Oort does what a serious critic hopes to do: he helps us to see and in doing so makes these great but familiar plays new again.” - Raymond Tallis, author of 'Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis, and the Misrepresentation of Humanity' (2011) and Professor Emeritus of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester