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Using Hamlet and a number of other popular and influential seventeenth-century tragedies as case-studies, this book shows how aesthetic experience can help organize the biological functions of our brains into adaptive social networks.

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Introduction: The Descent of Ethics Faustus, Macbeth , and The Riddle of Tomorrow Partial Belief in Julius Caesar and Hamlet Othello and the Subject of Ocular Proof The Indian Emperor and the Reason of New World Conflict Cartesian Pity and the New Shakespeare King Lear and the Endurance of Tragedy The Progress of Ethics

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ANGUS FLETCHER Assistant Professor of Critical Studies at UCLA, USA.

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