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Paul Cantor

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Paul Cantor
Born(1945-10-25)October 25, 1945
New York City, U.S.
DiedFebruary 26, 2022(2022-02-26) (aged 76)
NationalityAmerican
OccupationCritic

Paul A. Cantor (October 25, 1945 – February 26, 2022) was an American literary and media critic. He taught for many years at the University of Virginia, where he was the Clifton Waller Barrett Professor of English.

Cantor wrote on a remarkably wide range of subjects, including Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson,[1] Jane Austen,[2] Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Rousseau, Romanticism,[3] Oscar Wilde,[4] H. G. Wells,[5] Nietzsche, Leo Strauss,[6] , Elizabeth Gaskell, Samuel Beckett, Salman Rushdie,[7] Tom Stoppard, Don Delillo, New Historicism,[8] Austrian economics, postcolonial novels, contemporary popular culture, and relations between culture and commerce.

Early life

Cantor grew up in New York City. As a young man he was an avid reader with interests in science, philosophy, and literature.

While still in high school, Cantor attended Ludwig von Mises' economics seminars in New York City.

He went on to study English literature at Harvard (A.B., 1966, Ph.D., 1971), where he also studied politics with Harvey Mansfield.

Career

Shakespeare criticism

Cantor published extensively on Shakespeare. In Shakespeare's Rome: Republic and Empire (1974), a revision of his doctoral thesis, he analyzed Shakespeare's Roman plays and contrasted the austere, republican mentality of Coriolanus with the bibulous and erotic energies of Antony and Cleopatra. He returned to the Roman plays in Shakespeare's Roman Trilogy: The Twilight of the Ancient World (2017).

In Shakespeare: Hamlet (1989), he depicted Hamlet as a man torn between pagan and Christian conceptions of heroism. In his articles on Macbeth, he analyzes "the Scottish play" using similar polarities.[9]

Cantor has also published articles on many other Shakespeare plays, including As You Like It,[10] The Merchant of Venice,[11] Henry V,[12] Othello,[13] King Lear,[14] Timon of Athens,[15] and The Tempest.[16]

A characteristic feature of Cantor's work is his focus on various historical regimes and their depiction in Shakespeare's plays. Cantor notes that different regimes promote different ideas about human beings, the good, and government. He compares and contrasts the early Roman regime as depicted in Coriolanus and the later Roman regime as depicted in Antony and Cleopatra, pagan values and Christian values, republican regimes and monarchical regimes.

Romanticism

Cantor's second book, Creature and Creator: Myth-Making and English Romanticism (1984), included discussions of Rousseau, Blake, Byron, and the Shelleys.

Media criticism

Cantor was perhaps best known for his writings on popular culture. In Gilligan Unbound: Pop Culture in the Age of Globalization (2003), he used literary and critical methods to analyze four popular American television shows: Gilligan's Island, Star Trek, The Simpsons, and The X-Files. Nine years later he followed this book up with another book on movies and television: The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture: Liberty vs. Authority in American Film and TV (2012). He also published many articles, many of which are listed on his webpage at the University of Virginia. A 2004 article in Americana described Cantor as "a preeminent scholar in the field of American popular culture studies."[17]

Austrian economics

Cantor combined his interest in literature with an interest in Austrian Economics. Literature and the Economics of Liberty: Spontaneous Order in Culture (2010),[18] a collection of essays Cantor edited with Stephen Cox, explored ways of using Austrian economics to understand works of literature. Cantor presented his work at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and in 1992 he received the Ludwig von Mises Prize for Scholarship in Austrian Economics.

Personal life and death

Cantor was born in New York City on October 25, 1945.[19] He died on February 26, 2022, in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the age of 76.[20]

References

  1. ^ The Law versus the Marketplace in Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, in Solon and Thesis: Law and Theater in the English Renaissance, ed. Dennis Kezar
  2. ^ "A Class Act: Persuasion and the Lingering Death of the Aristocracy," Philosophy and Literature 23.1 (1999)127-137.
  3. ^ "The Politics of Epic: Wordsworth, Byron, and the Romantic Redefinition of Heroism," The Review of Politics 69 (2007) 375-401.
  4. ^ "Oscar Wilde: The Man of Soul Under Socialism," in Beauty and the Critic ed. James Soderholm (1997).
  5. ^ The Invisible Man and the Invisible Hand:H. G. Wells's Critique of Capitalism, The American Scholar.
  6. ^ Leo Strauss and Contemporary Hermeneutics," in Leo Strauss's Thought, ed. Alan Udoff (1991).
  7. ^ "Tales of the Alhambra: Rushdie's Use of Spanish History in The Moor's Last Sigh," Studies in the Novel (1997).
  8. ^ "Stephen Greenblatt's New Historicist Vision," Academic Questions (1993).
  9. ^ "'A Soldier and Afeard': Macbeth and the Gospelling of Scotland," Interpretation, Spring 1997. Reprinted in revised form as “Macbeth and the Gospelling of Scotland” in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, eds. John Alvis and Thomas West, ISI Press, 2000.
  10. ^ “The Spectrum of Love: Nature and Convention in As You Like It,” in Souls With Longing: Representations of Honor and Love in Shakespeare, eds. Bernard J. Dobski and Dustin A. Gish, Lexington Books, 2011
  11. ^ Religion and the Limits of Community in The Merchant of Venice, Soundings.
  12. ^ “‘Christian Kings’ and ‘English Mercuries’: Henry V and the Classical Tradition of Manliness,” in Educating the Prince: Essays in Honor of Harvey Mansfield, eds. Mark Blitz and William Kristol, Rowman & Littlefield, 2000; “Shakespeare’s Henry V: From the Medieval to the Modern World,” in Perspectives on Politics in Shakespeare, eds. John A. Murley and Sean D. Sutton, Lexington Books, 2006.
  13. ^ "Othello: The Erring Barbarian among the Supersubtle Venetians," Southwest Review, Summer 1990
  14. ^ "King Lear: The Tragic Disjunction of Wisdom and Power," in Shakespeare's Political Pageant, ed. Joseph Alulis and Vickie Sullivan (1996); "Nature and Convention in King Lear," in Poets, Princes, & Private Citizens: Literary Alternatives to Postmodern Politics, eds. Joseph Knippenberg and Peter Lawler, Rowman & Littlefield, 1996; "On Sitting Down to Read King Lears Once Again: The Textual Deconstruction of Shakespeare," in The Flight From Science and Reason, eds. Paul Gross, Norman Levitt, and Martin Lewis, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997
  15. ^ "Timon of Athens: The Corrupt City and the Origins of Philosophy," IN-BETWEEN: Essays and Studies in Literary Criticism, 4.1. (March,1995)
  16. ^ "Shakespeare's The Tempest: The Wise Man as Hero," Shakespeare Quarterly, Spring 1980; "Prospero's Republic: The Politics of Shakespeare's The Tempest," in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, eds. John Alvis and Thomas West, Carolina Academic Press, 1981;“Shakespeare’ The Tempest: Tragicomedy and the Philosophic Hero,” in Shakespeare’s Last Plays: Essays in Literature and Politics, eds. Stephen W. Smith and Travis Curtright, Lexington Books, 2002
  17. ^ "Conversations with Scholars of American Popular Culture". Americana. 2004. Retrieved 2021-03-31.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  18. ^ https://mises.org/books/literature_and_liberty_cantor.pdf
  19. ^ "A Brief Intellectual Biography". Paul A. Cantor. Retrieved 27 February 2022.
  20. ^ Paul Cantor (1945–2022) R.I.P.

Webpage at UVA:

  • Paul Cantor's faculty profile on the University of Virginia English Department website, with some bibliography.

Videos featuring Paul A. Cantor:

Online publications by Paul A. Cantor:

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