Author: Alan R. Velie
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780838611265
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
Follows the treatment of repentance in Two Gentlemen of Verona, Much Ado About Nothing, All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest to show the relationship of theme and form, and the dramatist's experimentation with forms until he accomplished his goal--the probing psychological exploration of men who sin, repent, and achieve redemption.

Author: David N. Beauregard
Publisher: Associated University Presse
ISBN: 0874130026
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Explores and reexamines Shakespeare's theology from the standpoint of revisionist history of the English Reformation.

Author: Sarah Beckwith
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801461103
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Shakespeare lived at a time when England was undergoing the revolution in ritual theory and practice we know as the English Reformation. With it came an unprecedented transformation in the language of religious life. Whereas priests had once acted as mediators between God and men through sacramental rites, Reformed theology declared the priesthood of all believers. What ensued was not the tidy replacement of one doctrine by another but a long and messy conversation about the conventions of religious life and practice. In this brilliant and strikingly original book, Sarah Beckwith traces the fortunes of this conversation in Shakespeare’s theater. Beckwith focuses on the sacrament of penance, which in the Middle Ages stood as the very basis of Christian community and human relations. With the elimination of this sacrament, the words of penance and repentance—"confess," "forgive," "absolve" —no longer meant (no longer could mean) what they once did. In tracing the changing speech patterns of confession and absolution, both in Shakespeare’s work and Elizabethan and Jacobean culture more broadly, Beckwith reveals Shakespeare’s profound understanding of the importance of language as the fragile basis of our relations with others. In particular, she shows that the post-tragic plays, especially Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest, are explorations of the new regimes and communities of forgiveness. Drawing on the work of J. L. Austin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Stanley Cavell, Beckwith enables us to see these plays in an entirely new light, skillfully guiding us through some of the deepest questions that Shakespeare poses to his audiences.

Author: R. Chris Hassel Jr.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472577299
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
Religious issues and discourse are key to an understanding of Shakespeare's plays and poems. This dictionary discusses over 1000 words and names in Shakespeare's works that have a religious connotation. Its unique word-by-word approach allows equal consideration of the full nuance of each of these words, from 'abbess' to 'zeal'. It also gradually reveals the persistence, the variety, and the sophistication of Shakespeare's religious usage. Frequent attention is given to the prominence of Reformation controversy in these words, and to Shakespeare's often ingenious and playful metaphoric usage of them. Theological commonplaces assume a major place in the dictionary, as do overt references to biblical figures, biblical stories and biblical place-names; biblical allusions; church figures and saints.

Author: N. Herold
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137432675
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
Over the last decade a number of prison theatre programs have developed to rehabilitate inmates by having them perform Shakespearean adaptations. This book focuses on how prison theatre today reveals certain elements of the early modern theatre that were themselves responses to cataclysmic changes in theological doctrine and religious practice.

Author: Joseph Rosenblum
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 3141

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Book Description
This expansive four-volume work gives students detailed explanations of Shakespeare's plays and poems and also covers his age, life, theater, texts, and language. Numerous excerpts from primary source historical documents contextualize his works, while reviews of productions chronicle his performance history and reception. Shakespeare's works often served to convey simple truths, but they are also complex, multilayered masterpieces. Shakespeare drew on varied sources to create his plays, and while the plays are sometimes set in worlds before the Elizabethan age, they nonetheless parallel and comment on situations in his own era. Written with the needs of students in mind, this four-volume set demystifies Shakespeare for today's readers and provides the necessary perspective and analysis students need to better appreciate the genius of his work. This indispensable ready reference examines Shakespeare's plots, language, and themes; his use of sources and exploration of issues important to his age; the interpretation of his works through productions from the Renaissance to the present; and the critical reaction to key questions concerning his writings. The book provides coverage of each key play and poems in discrete sections, with each section presenting summaries; discussions of themes, characters, language, and imagery; and clear explications of key passages. Readers will be able to inspect historical documents related to the topics explored in the work being discussed and view excerpts from Shakespeare's sources as well as reviews of major productions. The work also provides a comprehensive list of print and electronic resources suitable for student research.

Author: A. J. Hoenselaars
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780838634318
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
The connection between Renaissance ideas about the character of individual nations and the presentation of stage characters of various nationalities in the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries is examined in this volume.

Author: Mrs. Mary Ellen Ferris Gettemy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description

Author: Velma Bourgeois Richmond
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474247490
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
This book assesses William Shakespeare in the context of political and religious crisis, paying particular attention to his Catholic connections, which have heretofore been underplayed by much Protestant interpretation. Bourgeois Richmond's most important contribution is to study the genre of romance in its guise as a 'cover' for recusant Catholicism, drawing on a long tradition of medieval-religious plays devoted to the propagation of Catholic religious faith.

Author: Heather Hirschfeld
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801470625
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
In The End of Satisfaction, Heather Hirschfeld recovers the historical specificity and the conceptual vigor of the term "satisfaction" during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Focusing on the term’s significance as an organizing principle of Christian repentance, she examines the ways in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries dramatized the consequences of its re- or de-valuation in the process of Reformation doctrinal change. The Protestant theology of repentance, Hirschfeld suggests, underwrote a variety of theatrical plots "to set things right" in a world shorn of the prospect of "making enough" (satisfacere).Hirschfeld’s semantic history traces today’s use of "satisfaction"—as an unexamined measure of inward gratification rather than a finely nuanced standard of relational exchange—to the pressures on legal, economic, and marital discourses wrought by the Protestant rejection of the Catholic sacrament of penance (contrition, confession, satisfaction) and represented imaginatively on the stage. In so doing, it offers fresh readings of the penitential economies of canonical plays including Dr. Faustus, The Revenger’s Tragedy, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello; considers the doctrinal and generic importance of lesser-known plays including Enough Is as Good as a Feast and Love’s Pilgrimage; and opens new avenues into the study of literature and repentance in early modern England.