Shakespeare and Protestant Poetics

This book explores the impact of the sixteenth-century Reformation on the plays of William Shakespeare. Taking three fundamental Protestant concerns of the era (double) predestination, conversion, and free will it demonstrates how Protestant theologians, in England and elsewhere, re-imagined these longstanding Christian concepts from a specifically Protestant perspective. Shakespeare utilizes these insights to generate his distinctive view of human nature and the relationship between humans and God. Through in-depth readings of the Shakespeare comedies 'The Merry Wives of Windsor', 'Much Ado About Nothing', 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', and 'Twelfth Night', the romance 'A Winter's Tale', and the tragedies of 'Macbeth' and 'Hamlet', this book examines the results of almost a century of Protestant thought upon literary art.

Examines the use of specifically Protestant theological concepts in Shakespeare's works. Considers three key concepts of double predestination, conversion, and free will Debates how Shakespeare questions his own religious heritage in his most famous plays

Autorentext
Jason Gleckman is Associate Professor of English at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has published essays on William Shakespeare, Thomas More, Edmund Spenser, and Thomas Wyatt. This is his first book.

Inhalt
Introduction.- Section One Predestination.- Predestination, Single and Double in Christian History.- The Reformation and the Revival of Double Predestination Thought.- Double Predestination in Early English Drama.- Double Predestination in Shakespearean Comedy and Tragedy: The Merry Wives of Windsor and Macbeth.- Double Predestination and Assurance in Shakespeare: Macbeth and Twelfth Night.- Section Two Conversion.- Conversion in Protestant and Catholic Thought in the Reformation.- The Protestant Conversion into Marriage.- The Shakespearean Conversion Paradigm: Much Ado About Nothing.- English Protestant Conversion in A Midsummer Night's Dream.- Apostasy in in The Winter's Tale.- Section Three Free Will.- The Three Components of Free will in Plato and Aristotle: Thumos, Reason, and Deliberative Reason.- The Free Will in Augustine, the Middle Ages, and the Reformation.- Free will and Free Conscience in Hamlet.- Hamlet and the Free Will in Action.- The Player's Speech.