Shakespeare's Religious Allusiveness

Its Play and Tolerance
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8153-9702-1
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Inc

Buch, Englisch, 164 Seiten, Format (B × H): 225 mm x 160 mm, Gewicht: 340 g

Shakespeare's Religious Allusiveness complicates debates about whether Shakespeare's plays are fundamentally Protestant or Catholic in sympathy, challenging analyses that either find Protestant elements consistently undercutting Catholic motifs or, less often, discover evidence of the playwright's endorsement of Catholic doctrine and customs. Rather, Maurice Hunt argues that Shakespeare's syncretistic method of incorporating both Protestant and Catholic elements into his plays was singular among early modern English playwrights at a time when governmental and social tolerance of Protestantism in the theatre was high and criticism of stereotyped Catholicism was correspondingly rampant in drama. In-depth discussions of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Second Henriad, All's Well That Ends Well, Twelfth Night, and Othello reveal how Shakespeare allusively integrates Reformation Protestant and Roman Catholic motifs and systems of thought. This book sheds new light on the playwright's knowledge of and interest in Elizabethan and Jacobean religious debates over the nature of spiritual reformation, the efficacy of merit for redemption, and the operation of Providence. It will appeal not only to Shakespeare scholars but to those interested in the cultural history of the Reformation.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hunt, Maurice

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents: Preface; Catholicism, Protestant Reformation, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona; The hybrid reformations of Shakespeare's second Henriad; Helena and the reformation problem of merit in All's Well That Ends Well; Malvolio, Viola, and the question of instrumentality: defining providence in Twelfth Night; Predestination and the heresy of merit in Othello; Coda; Bibliography; Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Maurice Hunt is Research Professor of English at Baylor University, USA. He is the author of ten books, including Shakespeare's Romance of the Word (1990), Shakespeare's Labored Art: Stir, Work, and the Late Plays (1995), Shakespeare's Religious Allusiveness (2004), and Shakespeare's Speculative Art (2011).