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This volume freshly illuminates the diversity of early modern religious beliefs, practices and issues, and their representation in Shakespeare's plays.
List of contents
Introduction David Loewenstein and Michael Witmore; Part I. Revisiting Religious Contexts in Shakespeare's England: 1. The debate about Shakespeare and religion David Bevington; 2. Choosing sides and talking religion in Shakespeare's England Peter Marshall; 3. Experiencing religion in London: diversity and choice in Shakespeare's metropolis Felicity Heal; Part II. Representing Religious Beliefs and Diversity in the Plays: 4. Delusion in A Midsummer Night's Dream Alison Shell; 5. The siege of Jerusalem and subversive rhetoric in King John Beatrice Groves; 6. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and the search for a usable (Christian?) past Peter Lake; 7. Lucretius, Calvin, and natural law in Measure for Measure Adrian Streete; 8. Agnostic Shakespeare?: the God-less world of King Lear David Loewenstein; 9. 'Another Golgotha' Ewan Fernie; 10. Shakespeare and wisdom literature Michael Witmore; 11. Awakening faith in The Winter's Tale Richard McCoy; 12. Hamlet, Henry VIII, and the question of religion: a post-secular perspective Paul Stevens; 13. Converting Henry: truth, history, and historical faith in Henry VIII Michael Davies; 14. Shakespeare's non-Christian religions Matthew Dimmock; Afterword Brian Cummings.
About the author
David Loewenstein is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and the Humanities at Pennsylvania State University. He is the editor and author of many publications, including John Milton, Prose: Major Writings on Liberty, Politics, Religion, and Education (2013), Treacherous Faith: The Specter of Heresy in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (2013), The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature (coeditor, Cambridge, 2002), and Representing Revolution in Milton and his Contemporaries: Religion, Politics, and Polemics in Radical Puritanism (Cambridge, 2001) which won a James Holly Hanford Distinguished Book Award.Michael Witmore is Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. He is the author of Landscapes of the Passing Strange: Reflections from Shakespeare (with Rosamond Purcell, 2010), Shakespearean Metaphysics (2008), and Pretty Creatures: Children and Fiction in the English Renaissance (2007). He is also the editor of Childhood and Children's Books in Early Modern Europe, 1550–1800 (with Andrea Immel, 2006).
Summary
This collection of fourteen new essays freshly illuminates early modern religious beliefs and practices, and the ways in which Shakespeare engages with a diversity of religious issues and perspectives in his plays. Offering an interdisciplinary approach, the collection is of great interest to readers of history, Shakespeare studies, and religious studies.
