The English Bard and French Theory

Abstract

This essay revisits the question of Shakespeare’s contemporaneity in light of the interpretive frameworks that have dominated the last half-century of literary criticism. Beginning with Jan Kott’s assertion that Shakespeare is “our contemporary,” I examine how the Frankfurt School and “French Theory” reshaped Shakespearean studies through Marxist, feminist, queer, postcolonial, and ecocritical lenses. While acknowledging some of the insights these approaches have brought, I also express scepticism toward their ideological excesses, which often obscure Shakespeare’s artistry and meaning. Drawing on examples from the sonnets, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, The Tempest, and other plays, I argue for a return to historical-philological methods and for the cultivation of aesthetic wonder in the study of literature. In an age dominated by radical theory, daring to affirm the banality that Shakespeare was a great artist, not a social fighter or a fierce representative of “patriarchy” may itself be a radical act.