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About
"One of Choice Reviews' Outstanding Academic Titles of 2018" Rhodri Lewis is Senior Research Scholar in English at Princeton University. He is the author of Language, Mind, and Nature: Artificial Languages in England from Bacon to Locke and William Petty on the Order of Nature.
An acclaimed new interpretation of Shakespeare's Hamlet
Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness is a radical new interpretation of the most famous play in the English language. By exploring Shakespeare's engagements with the humanist traditions of early modern England and Europe, Rhodri Lewis reveals a Hamlet unseen for centuries: an innovative, coherent, and exhilaratingly bleak tragedy in which the governing ideologies of Shakespeare's age are scrupulously upended. Recovering a work of far greater magnitude than the tragedy of a young man who cannot make up his mind, Lewis shows that in Hamlet, as in King Lear, Shakespeare confronts his audiences with a universe that received ideas are powerless to illuminate-and where everyone must find their own way through the dark. "Lewis's absorbing and original Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness is the first major reinterpretation of the play in some time. . . . Lewis's brilliant analysis here gives fresh meaning to long-familiar if half-understood phrases."-James Shapiro, New York Review of Books "Lewis's deeply researched monograph repays close attention."-Jonathan Bate, Times Literary Supplement "Extraordinary learning and critical insight. . . . Endlessly productive, exciting, and original."-David Bevington, Renaissance Quarterly "A wonderful book. . . . It's a volume that all prospective producers of the play should examine assiduously."-Barry Gillard, The Australian "A work of tremendous erudition. . . . With highly original but also extensively documented discussions of nearly every line and textual crux, it has the impact of a variorum."-Heather Hirschfeld, Modern Philology
An acclaimed new interpretation of Shakespeare's Hamlet
Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness is a radical new interpretation of the most famous play in the English language. By exploring Shakespeare's engagements with the humanist traditions of early modern England and Europe, Rhodri Lewis reveals a Hamlet unseen for centuries: an innovative, coherent, and exhilaratingly bleak tragedy in which the governing ideologies of Shakespeare's age are scrupulously upended. Recovering a work of far greater magnitude than the tragedy of a young man who cannot make up his mind, Lewis shows that in Hamlet, as in King Lear, Shakespeare confronts his audiences with a universe that received ideas are powerless to illuminate-and where everyone must find their own way through the dark. "Lewis's absorbing and original Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness is the first major reinterpretation of the play in some time. . . . Lewis's brilliant analysis here gives fresh meaning to long-familiar if half-understood phrases."-James Shapiro, New York Review of Books "Lewis's deeply researched monograph repays close attention."-Jonathan Bate, Times Literary Supplement "Extraordinary learning and critical insight. . . . Endlessly productive, exciting, and original."-David Bevington, Renaissance Quarterly "A wonderful book. . . . It's a volume that all prospective producers of the play should examine assiduously."-Barry Gillard, The Australian "A work of tremendous erudition. . . . With highly original but also extensively documented discussions of nearly every line and textual crux, it has the impact of a variorum."-Heather Hirschfeld, Modern Philology