Gwyn Daniel - Family Dramas: Intimacy, Power and Systems in Shakespeares Tragedies

Most of Shakespeares tragedies have a family drama at their heart. Family Dramas: Intimacy, Power and Systems in Shakespeares Tragedies brings these relationships to life, offering a radical new perspective on the tragic heroes and their dilemmas. It focusses on the interactions and dialogues between people on stage, linking conflicts in their intimate emotional worlds to wider social and political contexts.

Exploring the diverse relationships in Shakespeares tragedies sheds a different light on the predicaments faced by each of the protagonists. It shows how moral and ideological struggles are worked out within family relationships. The book introduces a family systems approach to literary criticism, relating these ideas to other approaches within Shakespeare studies. Gender features strongly in the analysis since it is within gender relationships that intimacy and power most compellingly intersect and frequently collide.

For Shakespeare lovers and psychotherapists alike, this application of family therapy theory opens up new vistas on a familiar literary landscape.

Gwyn Daniel has practised as a family therapist, trainer and clinical supervisor within the National Health Service and she co-founded the Oxford Family Institute. She is a visiting lecturer at the Tavistock Clinic, London. She has authored or co-authored many professional books and articles. In the past ten years she has given presentations, both nationally and internationally, on her family systems approach to Shakespeares tragedies.

This book is a feast for family therapists and Shakespeare lovers alike. How pleasurable to see systemic ideas reflected in different light as Gwyn Daniel puts them to use in her lively reading of Shakespeares plays. And how pleasurable to appreciate, yet again, across time and culture and contexts, the drama and complexity of human relating and the beauty of Shakespeare.

Carmel Flaskas, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Australia

Gwyn Daniel is a phenomenally astute and sensitive reader of people and relationships; she is also a phenomenally astute and sensitive reader of Shakespeares plays. This book combines her skills in family therapy and in Shakespeare. The result is a fresh reading of major plays, with new insights in every chapter. It is a book that also displays acute theatrical sensitivity: what we see on stage is characters performing relationally. The Shakespeare lover, the therapist, and the theatre-goer will find much to treasure in this valuable book. Gwyn Daniel distils her immense knowledge and her close reading of Shakespeare into precise observations that consistently offer perceptive articulations of social systems and family relations.

Laurie Maguire, Professor of Shakespeare, University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow, Magdalen College

Series Editors: Charlotte Burck and Gwyn Daniel

This influential series was co-founded in 1989 by series editors David Campbell and Ros Draper to promote innovative applications of systemic theory to psychotherapy, teaching, supervision and organisational consultation. In 2011, Charlotte Burck and Gwyn Daniel became series editors and aim to present new theoretical developments and pioneering practice, make links with other theoretical approaches, and promote the relevance of systemic theory to contemporary social and psychological questions.

Recent titles in the series inlcude:

Family Dramas: Intimacy, Power and Systems in Shakespeares Tragedies

Gwyn Daniel

The Heart of the Matter: Music and Art in Family Therapy

Hilary Palmer

Staying Attached: Fathers and Children in Troubled Times

Gill Gorell Barnes

Creativity in Times of Constraint: A Practitioner's Companion in Mental Health and Social Care

Jim Wilson

Surviving and Thriving in Care and Beyond: Personal and Professional Perspectives

Edited by Sara Barratt and Wendy Lobatto

Emotions and the Therapist: A Systemic-Dialogical Approach

Paolo Bertrando

Creative Positions in Adult Mental Health: Outside In-Inside Out

Edited by Sue McNab and Karen Partridge

First published 2019

by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2019 Gwyn Daniel

The right of Gwyn Daniel to be identified as the author has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 9781138335769 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781138335776 (pbk)

ISBN: 9780429443541 (ebk)

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To my sister, Anne Harrison