Coriolanus (Vol. 30) | Stanley Cavell (essay date 1983)
Stanley Cavell (essay date 1983)
SOURCE: "Coriolanus and Interpretations of Politics ('Who Does the Wolf Love?')," in Themes Out of School: Effects and Causes, North Point Press, 1984, pp. 60-96.
[In the following essay first published in Representations in 1983, Cavell surveys recurring images of consumption in Coriolanus, especially their uses as political metaphors.]
Something that draws me to Coriolanus is its apparent disdain of questions I have previously asked of Shakespearean tragedy, taking tragedy as an epistemological problem, a refusal to know or to be known, an avoidance of acknowledgment, an expression (or imitation) of skepticism. Coriolanus's refusal to acknowledge his participation in finite human existence may seem so obviously the fact of the matter of his play that to note it seems merely to describe the play, not at all to interpret it. It may be, however, that this lack of theoretical grip...
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