Shakespearean nothing and the Mahayana Buddhist Emptiness in the "Heart Sutra": Non-dual visions of reality.

The dissertation investigates the concept of Shakespearean poetic emptiness contained in his dramatic works as a parallel to the Mahayana Buddhist Emptiness expounded in the Heart Sutra. It is an experimental attempt to penetrate the perennial mystery of Shakespeare the man, his creation, and his creativity. The points of departure are the Coleridgean concept of imagination and Keat's formulation of Negative Capability. Though Shakespeare and Mahayana Buddhists seem to start from diametrically opposed ontological precepts--the Western emphasis on being and the Eastern insistence on nonbeing--both share surprisingly similar views of what is ultimately real about our existence in the universe. Once defined and applied to five Shakespearean tragedies--Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Hamlet--the concept of Shakespearean poetic emptiness provides a unifying point of view which enables us to read these plays non-dualistically. The critical objective is to emulate the calmness of the Shakespearean emptiness where all sorts of dualities are overcome. The source of his creative tranquility is his view of the theatre, drama, and the whole world as aery nothing. His insight into the emptiness of all phenomena includes himself, of course; he genuinely gets rid of his self--not in the real but in the conventional senses of the word. Therefore, in his vision there is neither confusion nor division regarding the ontological question of existence and nonexistence, the psychological question of affirmation and negation, and the moral question of good and evil. As a consequence, Shakespeare's own view in the tragedies can best be characterized by its non-judgmental, non-assertive, and non-declarative qualities.PhDComparative literatureBritish and Irish literatureMiddle Eastern literatureUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/161907/1/8821560.pd