Reading Othello as Catholic Tragedy

Reading Othello as Catholic Tragedy PDF

Author: Greg Maillet

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2019-01-15

Total Pages: 117

ISBN-13: 1527525732

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book expands upon recent historical analysis of Shakespeare’s Othello, which has foregrounded issues of race, colonialism, and feminism, in order to show how the discourse of religion might affect our understanding of this play. It specifically looks at how the discourse of Catholicism, itself a highly contested topic in Shakespeare’s world, affects our understanding of Desdemona, whom the play so directly compares to perhaps the most divisive and controversial figure of the entire ‘Reformation’ period, Mary the Mother of God. Explaining how this comparison is developed and clarified by Shakespeare, this book explores the difference our interpretation of Desdemona’s ‘Marian’ dimension might make to critical understanding of the tragedy of Othello.

Christian Settings in Shakespeare's Tragedies

Christian Settings in Shakespeare's Tragedies PDF

Author: D. Douglas Waters

Publisher: Associated University Presse

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 9780838635285

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Battenhouse's Shakespearean tragedy: Its art and Christian premises, Irving Ribner's Patterns in Shakespearian tragedy, Virgil K. Whitaker's The mirror up to nature: The techniques of Shakespeare's tragedies, and Robert Grams Hunter's Shakespeare and the mystery of God's judgments. Waters questions, for example, Battenhouse's validity of Christian theological and didactic emphases on the old purgation theory of catharsis. His approach differs also from Northrop Frye's views on the tragedies in Northrop Frye on Shakespeare, an archetypal approach to representative plays including the tragedies.

If Is the Only Peacemaker

If Is the Only Peacemaker PDF

Author: Greg Maillet

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2022-06-13

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1666705209

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

If Is the Only Peacemaker explores the drama of Shakespeare through a cultural lens that can be shown to be central to the formation of this theatrical art: fourteenth- to sixteenth-century Catholic Humanism. Part I of this book traces this tradition through key figures in Medieval and Renaissance Humanism, including Dante, Chaucer, Erasmus, and Thomas More. The latter two, especially, convey Catholic Humanism to Shakespeare’s England, and help to establish a rhetorical ideal: the union of eloquentia and sapientia, of wit and wisdom. Part II then closely reads one of Shakespeare’s major comedies, As You Like It, through this ideal, finding in this play an outstanding example of the Catholic Humanist rhetoric central to Shakespeare’s art. This part of the book also mingles rhetorical and performance criticism, citing six different productions of As You Like It.

The Shakespearean Search for Archetypes

The Shakespearean Search for Archetypes PDF

Author: Maria-Ana Tupan

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2020-11-11

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 1527561984

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Weaving coherent archetypal scripts rather than ornamental appoggiaturas in an attempt at essentialization, Shakespeare did not, however, launch metanarratives which impoverish the perspective on the world. His coded mythopoetic figures do not function as transcendental agency as they do in sacred history, but rather as batteries of condensed and codified meaning or as indices of a certain culture. Intended for academic and general readers alike, this book finds in archetypes as operators or functions of discourse the explanation why Shakespeare has seemed to respond through time to as different approaches as psychological, phenomenological, deconstructionist, postcolonial, New Historicist or feminist perspectives.

In the Company of Shakespeare

In the Company of Shakespeare PDF

Author: Thomas Moisan

Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780838639023

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book is an anthology of critical essays written about English literature during the Renaissance (or the 'early-modern' period). It focuses on Shakespeare's poetry and plays, including the 'Sonnets', 'The Phoenix and the Turtle', 'The Rape of Lucrece', 'King Lear', 'Othello', 'Measure for Measure', and 'Timon of Athens'. Also examined are the publication of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, William Cartwright's play 'The Royal Slave', and James Halliwell-Phillips, one of the central figures in the Shakespearean textual tradition.