Image Ethics in Shakespeare and Spenser

Focusing on works by Shakespeare and Spenser, this study shows the connection between visuality and ethical action in early modern English literature. James A. Knapp places early modern debates about the value of visual experience into dialogue with subsequent philosophical and ethical efforts. Image Ethics in Shakespeare and Spenser is a study of the connection between visuality and ethical action in early modern English literature. Focusing on works by Shakespeare and Spenser, this book details varying attitudes toward the development of ethical human subjectivity at a moment when basic assumptions about perception and knowledge were breaking down. Knapp places early modern debates over the value of visual experience in determinations of truth and ethical action into dialog with subsequent (and on-going) philosophical efforts to articulate an ethics that accounts for visual experience