Author: Lee Oser Publisher: ISBN: 9780813235110 Category : Christian humanism Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
"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. 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, the author portrays Shakespeare as a friend to the enduring project of humanistic education"--
Author: Lee Oser Publisher: CUA Press ISBN: 0813235103 Category : Drama Languages : en Pages : 300
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: Robert B. Bennett Publisher: University of Delaware Press ISBN: 9780874136715 Category : Drama Languages : en Pages : 204
Book Description
Shakespeare explored this question in Measure for Measure at a time when the humanist consensus of roughly a century's duration in English culture seemed about to be eclipsed by a hardening of the positions of people who held opposing views on social issues."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Eric P. Levy Publisher: Associated University Presse ISBN: 9780838641392 Category : Drama Languages : en Pages : 262
Book Description
Isolating the conceptual apparatus dominant in the world of the play, this book traces the play's origins, including those pertaining to Christian Humanism and the Aristotelian-Thomist synthesis with its assumption of 'the sovereignty of reason'.
Author: John Spencer Hill Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP ISBN: 0773566813 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 215
Book Description
In Part 1 Hill examines the effect of the idea of spatial infinity on seventeenth-century literature, arguing that the metaphysical cosmology of Nicholas of Cusa provided Renaissance writers, such as Pascal, Traherne, and Milton, with a way to construe the vastness of space as the symbol of human spiritual potential. Focusing on time in Part 2, Hill reveals that, faced with the inexorability of time, Christian humanists turned to St Augustine to develop a philosophy that interpreted temporal passage as the necessary condition of experience without making it the essence or ultimate measure of human purpose. Hill's analysis centres on Shakespeare, whose experiments with the shapes of time comprise a gallery of heuristic time-centred fictions that attempt to explain the consequences of human existence in time. Infinity, Faith, and Time reveals that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a period during which individuals were able, with more success than in later times, to make room for new ideas without rejecting old beliefs.
Author: Curtis Brown Watson Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400878950 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 490
Book Description
Presenting a background study of honor, the author compares ancient concepts with the sympathetic restatements of them that appeared during the Renaissance. He places Shakespeare's plays in the context of these Renaissance ideas, pointing up the sharp conflict between Christian morality and the revived pagan humanism. He demonstrates by pertinent evidence from the plays that Shakespeare favored humanist values over Christian values. Originally published in 1960. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Nalin Ranasinghe Publisher: St. Augustine's Press ISBN: 9781587318177 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 200
Book Description
This is a posthumously published collection of Nalin Ranasinghe's sharp analyses of Shakespeare's five heavy dramas: Hamlet, King John, Julius Caesar, King Lear, and Antony and Cleopatra. True to form, Ranasinghe serves up philosophical and literary genius for the reader's benefit and delight. "I will try to claim that Shakespeare offers an esoteric vindication of the human soul itself, not merely poetry, against the looming backdrop of the Counter-Reformation in Europe and the Puritan perversion of English Anglicanism. Neither the Scholasticism of the former nor the fundamentalism of the latter had any sympathy for the claims of men like Bottom or the Bastard to see beyond the confines of scripture and sacred social structures. While poetry could indulge in metaphysical fantasy, it could not take on the status quo without the assistance of more learned allies; this Shakespeare seems to do by his re-telling of Classical and English history. As disingenuous as Bottom (or Erasmus) in this artful use of ignorance and folly to conceal his serious goals, Shakespeare is thus tying poetry to history and giving us an alternate, if playful, account of Western Civilization."
Author: Lee Oser
Author: Lee Oser
Author: Robert B. Bennett
Author: Nalin Ranasinghe
Author: Eric P. Levy
Author: John Spencer Hill
Author: Curtis Brown Watson
Author: Rolf Soellner
Author: Nalin Ranasinghe
Author: Corliss Lamont