Becoming posthumous

Set against a backdrop of debates about the so-called 'end of history', 'the death of the subject' and 'the end of art', as well as the various forms of the 'post' that became prevalent in the late twentieth century, Jeremy Tambling introduces the idea of 'the posthumous' as a means of thinking about our relationship to the past, to death and to history. The trope of the posthumous is played out in a pattern of four deftly argued 'case-chapters' devoted to Shakespeare's Cymbeline (where the hero...