Biblical Influences in Shakespeare's Great Tragedies PDF Download

Author: Peter Milward
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Author: Naseeb Shaheen
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874136777
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 896

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Book Description
Analyzes the biblical references that Shakespeare makes in his plays, surveying the different English Bibles available to Shakespeare, and pointing out which of these he referred to most often (the King James version only appeared near the end of his career). Also examines biblical references found in literary source material used by Shakespeare to determine whether he used or adapted these or added others from his own memory; and what these allusions would have meant to audiences of the time.--From publisher description.

Author: Naseeb Shaheen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Author: E. Beatrice Batson
Publisher: Baylor University Press
ISBN: 1932792368
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
This volume explores the influences of Catholicism and Protestantism in a trio of Shakespeare's tragedies: Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Hamlet. Bypassing the discussion of Shakespeare's personal religious beliefs, Batson instead focuses on distinct footprints left by Catholic and Protestant traditions that underlie and inform Shakespeare's artistic genius.

Author: Lee Oser
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 0813235103
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Shakespeare, Lee Oser argues, is a Christian literary artist who criticizes and challenges Christians, but who does so on Christian grounds. Stressing Shakespeare’s theological sensitivity, Oser places Shakespeare’s work in the “radical middle,” the dialectical opening between the sacred and the secular where great writing can flourish. According to Oser, the radical middle was and remains a site of cultural originality, as expressed through mimetic works of art intended for a catholic (small “c”) audience. It describes the conceptual space where Shakespeare was free to engage theological questions, and where his Christian skepticism could serve his literary purposes. Oser reviews the rival cases for a Protestant Shakespeare and for a Catholic Shakespeare, but leaves the issue open, focusing, instead, on how Shakespeare exploits artistic resources that are specific to Christianity, including the classical-Christian rhetorical tradition. The scope of the book ranges from an introductory survey of the critical field as it now stands, to individual chapters on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, the Henriad, Hamlet, and King Lear. Writing with a deep sense of literary history, Oser holds that mainstream literary criticism has created a false picture of Shakespeare by secularizing him and misconstruing the nature of his art. Through careful study of the plays, Oser recovers a Shakespeare who is less vulnerable to the winds of academic and political fashion, and who is a friend to the enduring project of humanistic education. Christian Humanism in Shakespeare: A Study in Religion and Literature is both eminently readable and a work of consequence.

Author: Naseeb Shaheen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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"William Shakespeare's works give ample evidence that he was well acquainted with Scripture. There is hardly a book in the Bible that he does not refer to in one or another of his plays. Not only is the range of his biblical references impressive, but also the aptness with which he makes them. But the Bibles that Shakespeare knew were not those that are in use today. By the time the King James Bible appeared, Shakespeare's career was all but over, and the Anglican liturgy that is evident in his plays is likewise one that few people are familiar with today." "This volume provides a comprehensive survey of the English Bibles of Shakespeare's day, notes their similarities and differences, and indicates which version the playwright knew best. The biblical references in each of the comedies are then carefully analyzed, as are Shakespeare's references to the Prayer Book and the homilies. The question of what constitutes a valid biblical reference is also discussed." "A particularly valuable feature of this volume is that it analyzes Shakespeare's references in light of his secular sources. To be of real worth, a study of Shakespeare's biblical references should not only list those references, but should enable the reader to determine which references Shakespeare borrowed from his plot sources and which he added from his own memory as part of his design for the play. Shakespeare's handling of his subject is often best understood when compared with his sources, and this is also true of his biblical references. The author has therefore studied every source that Shakespeare is known to have read or consulted before writing each play and has examined the biblical references in those sources. Then he points out which biblical references in his literary sources Shakespeare accepted and how he adapted them in his plays. This information is especially valuable when assessing the theological meanings that are sometimes imposed on his plays, meanings that often go beyond what Shakespeare intended or what his audience must have understood." "This volume on the comedies is a companion to the author's Biblical References in Shakespeare's Tragedies and Biblical References in Shakespeare's History Plays, published by the University of Delaware Press in 1987 and 1989. All three volumes are considerably broader in scope than any other study of Shakespeare's use of Scripture thus far attempted, and they provide the scholarly checks and balances in dealing with the subject that previous studies lacked."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Author: Steven Marx
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780198184409
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
Oxford Shakespeare Topics provides students and teachers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject. Notes and a critical guide tofurther reading equip the interested reader with the means to broaden research. Despite the presence of hundreds of Biblical allusions in Shakespeare, this is the first book to explore the pattern and significance of those references in relation to a selection of his greatest plays. It reveals the Bible as a rich source for Shakespeare's uses of myth, history, comedy andtragedy, his techniques of staging, and his ways of characterizing rulers, magicians and teachers in the image of the Bible's multifaceted God. This book also discloses ways in which Shakespeare's plays offer both pious and irreverent interpretations of the Scriptures comparable to those presentedby his contemporary writers, artists, philosophers and politicians. After an opening chapter comparing the Bible as a fragmented yet unified collection of 46 books with the fragmented yet unified First Folio collection of Shakespeare's 36 plays, each of the following six chapters matches a book of the Bible with a representative play: the creation myth of Genesiswith the first play in the Folio, The Tempest, the historical epic of Exodus with Henry V, the tragedy of Job with King Lear, the tragicomedy of the Gospel of Matthew with Measure for Measure, the homiletic disputation of Paul's Epistle to the Romans with The Merchant of Venice, and the apocalypticmasque of the Book of Revelation with The Tempest again. Though its subject matter and style appeal to a broad audience, this book is grounded in recent scholarship in Shakespeare and Biblical studies. Its intertextual readings are framed by descriptions of the historical circumstances of each work's composition and reception and by an emergent theory ofallusion as a principle of creation and understanding.

Author: Victoria Brownlee
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198812485
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
This book considers the relationship between biblical readings and literary writings in early modern England and it explores the impact of how the Bible was read across a variety of writers and genres.

Author: David Lyle Jeffrey
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 9780802836342
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1000

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Book Description
Over 15 years in the making, an unprecedented one-volume reference work. Many of today's students and teachers of literature, lacking a familiarity with the Bible, are largely ignorant of how Biblical tradition has influenced and infused English literature through the centuries. An invaluable research tool. Contains nearly 800 encyclopedic articles written by a distinguished international roster of 190 contributors. Three detailed annotated bibliographies. Cross-references throughout.

Author: J. A. BryantJr.
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813185904
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Scholars have already demonstrated that Shakespeare 's language abounds in Biblical allusions and references, but Mr. Bryant now undertakes to show us how such details may bear on the full meaning of the plays. Seeking to interpret Shakespeare's plays as Christian poetry, Mr. Bryant has developed in this significant work a new critical approach which may have far-reaching consequences for future Shakespearean scholarship. In an introductory essay the author shows that the typological view of Scripture was a familiar one to the Christians of Shakespeare 's time; he suggests that for Shakespeare, as for many of his contemporaries, the Bible had only one subject—Christ—to which everything in both Testaments in some way referred. This interpretation of Scripture, Mr. Bryant believes, had an appreciable effect on Shakespeare's handling of many of the traditional stories on which he based his plays. The author then demonstrates, in twelve essays, how typological patterns may be traced in the plays and how Biblical allusions suggest and strengthen these analogies. In both Richard II and Hamlet, Mr. Bryant finds references to the story of Cain and Abel which give a new focus to his reading of these plays. Passages from the Gospels bear upon his interpretations of Troilus and Cressida and Measure for Measure, and the epistles of St. Paul upon his readings of The Merchant of Venice and the two parts of Henry IV. Mr. Bryant then attacks the popular idea that tragedy is incompatible with Christian doctrine; his essay defining Christian tragedy is illustrated in chapters on Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Othello. The concluding essays deal with Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale as tragicomedies given depth by their Christian materials. Mr. Bryant's fresh and challenging interpretations of these representative tragedies, histories, and comedies will not meet with universal assent, but they are certain to provoke the interest of both scholarly and lay readers. The increasing number of students who wish to trace the relationships between secular literature and Christian thought will find in this pioneer work a new insight into the nature of Christian poetry.