A. C. Bradley

Andrew Cecil Bradley ( born March 26, in 1851; † September 2, 1935 ) was an English Shakespearean scholar.

Life and work

Bradley was born in Park Hill, Clapham, Surrey. He was the youngest of 21 children of the clergyman Charles Bradley ( 1789-1871 ) and his second wife Emma Linton. Among his siblings, the philosopher Francis Herbert Bradley heard. Bradley studied at Balliol College, Oxford. He was awarded a Fellowship in 1874 and first taught English language and then to 1881 philosophy. In this year he became a lecturer in literature at the University of Liverpool. In 1889 he was appointed Regius Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Glasgow. From 1901 to 1905 he was Oxford Professor of Poetry. In the five years of his employment there, he wrote Shakespearean Tragedy (1904) and Oxford Lectures on Poetry ( 1909). Later he became an Honorary Fellow at Balliol College and received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Durham. The call to "King Edward VII Professor of English Literature " at the University of Cambridge he refused. Bradley was his life unmarried and lived with his sister in Kensington, London. His property he bequeathed to a foundation for the promotion of young scientists.

Legacy

Shakespearean Tragedy was launched more than two dozen times again and is itself the subject of scientific studies literature. In the middle of the 20th century, his methodological approach of many scientists has been questioned and Bradley accused to apply the morals of the 19th century to the writer and the society of the Elizabethan era. 1951 Kenneth Burke in his work Othello: An Essay to Illustrate provided a method of character analysis Bradleys also in question, as before him LC Knights in the essay How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth? ( John Britton has pointed out that Bradley has not asked such a question, it rather goes back to a sarcastic remark by FR Leavis to "superfluous issues in the Shakespeare research .")

Due to the prevalence of post-structuralist methods since the 1970s, many researchers turned away from the Bradley's approach. In recent times, especially the conservative critic Harold Bloom has referred to the interpretation of Shakespeare in the tradition of Johnson, Hazlitt and Bradley as a model for his work. Recently, there is also again an increased interest in Bradley's reception of Hegel's theory of tragedy. Although Bradley has been criticized time and again that he has dealt with Shakespeare's characters as if they were real people, his tragedies - book is considered one of the most influential works on Shakespeare. 1907-1908 Bradley held Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow, under the title " ideal of religion. "