Hamlet in Purgatory - Expanded Edition

This book delves into the author's longtime fascination with the ghost of Hamlet's father, and his daring and ultimately gratifying journey takes him through surprising intellectual territory. It yields an extraordinary account of the rise and fall of Purgatory as both a belief and a lucrative institution as well as a capacious new reading of the power of Hamlet. In the mid-sixteenth century, English authorities abruptly changed the relationship between the living and dead. Declaring that Purgatory was afalse poem, they abolished the institutions and banned the practices that Christians relied on to ease the passage to Heaven for themselves and their dead loved ones. Greenblatt explores the fantastic adventure narratives, ghost stories, pilgrimages, andimagery by which a belief in a grisly prison house of souls had been shaped and reinforced in the Middle Ages. He probes the psychological benefits as well as the high costs of this belief and of its demolition.

Product details

• Authors: Greenblatt, Stephen Greenblatt
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 20.10.2013
• EAN: 9780691160245
• ISBN: 978-0-691-16024-5
• No. of pages: 344
• Series: Princeton Classic Editions; Princeton Classics; Princeton Classics
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; English, LITERARY CRITICISM / Drama, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / General, Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800, Shakespeare Studies & Criticism, Literary studies: plays and playwrights, Relating to Shakespeare / Shakespearean