Kathy Lavezzo
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781501703157
- eISBN:
- 9781501706158
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501703157.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
England during the Middle Ages was at the forefront of European antisemitism. It was in medieval Norwich that the notorious “blood libel” was first introduced when a resident accused the city's ...
More
England during the Middle Ages was at the forefront of European antisemitism. It was in medieval Norwich that the notorious “blood libel” was first introduced when a resident accused the city's Jewish leaders of abducting and ritually murdering a local boy. This book rethinks the complex and contradictory relation between England's rejection of “the Jew” and the centrality of Jews to classic English literature. Drawing on literary, historical, and cartographic texts, the book charts an entangled Jewish imaginative presence in English culture. It tracks how English writers from Bede to John Milton imagine Jews via buildings—tombs, latrines and especially houses—that support fantasies of exile. Epitomizing this trope is the blood libel and its implication that Jews cannot be accommodated in England because of the anti-Christian violence they allegedly perform in their homes. In the Croxton Play of the Sacrament, Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, and Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, the Jewish house not only serves as a lethal trap but also as the site of an emerging bourgeoisie incompatible with Christian pieties. In the book's epilogue, the chapters advance the inquiry into Victorian England and the relationship between Charles Dickens (whose Fagin is the second most infamous Jew in English literature after Shylock) and the Jewish couple that purchased his London home, Tavistock House, showing how far relations between gentiles and Jews in England had (and had not) evolved.Less
England during the Middle Ages was at the forefront of European antisemitism. It was in medieval Norwich that the notorious “blood libel” was first introduced when a resident accused the city's Jewish leaders of abducting and ritually murdering a local boy. This book rethinks the complex and contradictory relation between England's rejection of “the Jew” and the centrality of Jews to classic English literature. Drawing on literary, historical, and cartographic texts, the book charts an entangled Jewish imaginative presence in English culture. It tracks how English writers from Bede to John Milton imagine Jews via buildings—tombs, latrines and especially houses—that support fantasies of exile. Epitomizing this trope is the blood libel and its implication that Jews cannot be accommodated in England because of the anti-Christian violence they allegedly perform in their homes. In the Croxton Play of the Sacrament, Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, and Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, the Jewish house not only serves as a lethal trap but also as the site of an emerging bourgeoisie incompatible with Christian pieties. In the book's epilogue, the chapters advance the inquiry into Victorian England and the relationship between Charles Dickens (whose Fagin is the second most infamous Jew in English literature after Shylock) and the Jewish couple that purchased his London home, Tavistock House, showing how far relations between gentiles and Jews in England had (and had not) evolved.
John Watkins
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501707575
- eISBN:
- 9781501708527
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501707575.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
The Renaissance jurist Alberico Gentili once quipped that, just like comedies, all wars end in a marriage. In medieval and early modern Europe, marriage treaties were a perennial feature of the ...
More
The Renaissance jurist Alberico Gentili once quipped that, just like comedies, all wars end in a marriage. In medieval and early modern Europe, marriage treaties were a perennial feature of the diplomatic landscape. When one ruler decided to make peace with his enemy, the two parties often sealed their settlement with marriages between their respective families. This book traces the history of the practice, focusing on the unusually close relationship between diplomacy and literary production in Western Europe from antiquity through the seventeenth century, when marriage began to lose its effectiveness and prestige as a tool of diplomacy. The book begins with Virgil's foundational myth of the marriage between the Trojan hero Aeneas and the Latin princess, an account that formed the basis for numerous medieval and Renaissance celebrations of dynastic marriages by courtly poets and propagandists. It follows the slow decline of diplomatic marriage as both a tool of statecraft and a literary subject, exploring the skepticism and suspicion with which it was viewed in the works of Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare. The book argues that the plays of Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine signal the passing of an international order that had once accorded women a place of unique dignity and respect.Less
The Renaissance jurist Alberico Gentili once quipped that, just like comedies, all wars end in a marriage. In medieval and early modern Europe, marriage treaties were a perennial feature of the diplomatic landscape. When one ruler decided to make peace with his enemy, the two parties often sealed their settlement with marriages between their respective families. This book traces the history of the practice, focusing on the unusually close relationship between diplomacy and literary production in Western Europe from antiquity through the seventeenth century, when marriage began to lose its effectiveness and prestige as a tool of diplomacy. The book begins with Virgil's foundational myth of the marriage between the Trojan hero Aeneas and the Latin princess, an account that formed the basis for numerous medieval and Renaissance celebrations of dynastic marriages by courtly poets and propagandists. It follows the slow decline of diplomatic marriage as both a tool of statecraft and a literary subject, exploring the skepticism and suspicion with which it was viewed in the works of Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare. The book argues that the plays of Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine signal the passing of an international order that had once accorded women a place of unique dignity and respect.
Kathryn Hume
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450013
- eISBN:
- 9780801462870
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450013.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
A frequent complaint against contemporary American fiction is that too often it puts off readers in ways they find difficult to fathom. Books such as Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Katherine ...
More
A frequent complaint against contemporary American fiction is that too often it puts off readers in ways they find difficult to fathom. Books such as Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, and Don DeLillo's Underworld seem determined to upset, disgust, or annoy their readers—or to disorient them by shunning traditional plot patterns and character development. This book calls such works “aggressive fiction.” Why would authors risk alienating their readers—and why should readers persevere? Looking beyond the theory-based justifications that critics often provide for such fiction, this book offers a common-sense guide for the average reader who wants to better understand and appreciate books that might otherwise seem difficult to enjoy. The book considers roughly forty works of recent American fiction, including books by William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Chuck Palahniuk, and Cormac McCarthy. It gathers “attacks” on the reader into categories based on narrative structure and content. Writers of some aggressive fictions may wish to frustrate easy interpretation or criticism. Others may try to induce certain responses in readers. Extreme content deployed as a tactic for distancing and alienating can actually produce a contradictory effect: for readers who learn to relax and go with the flow, the result may well be exhilaration rather than revulsion.Less
A frequent complaint against contemporary American fiction is that too often it puts off readers in ways they find difficult to fathom. Books such as Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, and Don DeLillo's Underworld seem determined to upset, disgust, or annoy their readers—or to disorient them by shunning traditional plot patterns and character development. This book calls such works “aggressive fiction.” Why would authors risk alienating their readers—and why should readers persevere? Looking beyond the theory-based justifications that critics often provide for such fiction, this book offers a common-sense guide for the average reader who wants to better understand and appreciate books that might otherwise seem difficult to enjoy. The book considers roughly forty works of recent American fiction, including books by William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Chuck Palahniuk, and Cormac McCarthy. It gathers “attacks” on the reader into categories based on narrative structure and content. Writers of some aggressive fictions may wish to frustrate easy interpretation or criticism. Others may try to induce certain responses in readers. Extreme content deployed as a tactic for distancing and alienating can actually produce a contradictory effect: for readers who learn to relax and go with the flow, the result may well be exhilaration rather than revulsion.
Jane O. Newman
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801476594
- eISBN:
- 9780801460883
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801476594.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book offers a reading of Walter Benjamin's notoriously opaque work, Origin of the German Tragic Drama that systematically attends to its place in discussions of the Baroque in Benjamin's day. ...
More
This book offers a reading of Walter Benjamin's notoriously opaque work, Origin of the German Tragic Drama that systematically attends to its place in discussions of the Baroque in Benjamin's day. The book recovers Benjamin's relationship to the ideologically loaded readings of the literature and political theory of the seventeenth-century Baroque that abounded in Germany during the political and economic crises of the Weimar years. To date, the significance of the Baroque for Origin of the German Tragic Drama has been glossed over by students of Benjamin, most of whom have neither read it in this context nor engaged with the often incongruous debates about the period that filled both academic and popular texts in the years leading up to and following World War I. The book shows the extent to which Benjamin participated in these debates by reconstructing the literal and figurative history of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century books that Benjamin analyzes and the literary, art historical and art theoretical, and political theological discussions of the Baroque with which he was familiar. In so doing, it challenges the exceptionalist, even hagiographic, approaches that have become common in Benjamin studies.Less
This book offers a reading of Walter Benjamin's notoriously opaque work, Origin of the German Tragic Drama that systematically attends to its place in discussions of the Baroque in Benjamin's day. The book recovers Benjamin's relationship to the ideologically loaded readings of the literature and political theory of the seventeenth-century Baroque that abounded in Germany during the political and economic crises of the Weimar years. To date, the significance of the Baroque for Origin of the German Tragic Drama has been glossed over by students of Benjamin, most of whom have neither read it in this context nor engaged with the often incongruous debates about the period that filled both academic and popular texts in the years leading up to and following World War I. The book shows the extent to which Benjamin participated in these debates by reconstructing the literal and figurative history of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century books that Benjamin analyzes and the literary, art historical and art theoretical, and political theological discussions of the Baroque with which he was familiar. In so doing, it challenges the exceptionalist, even hagiographic, approaches that have become common in Benjamin studies.
Joseph M. Ortiz
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449314
- eISBN:
- 9780801460920
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449314.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
Music was a subject of considerable debate during the Renaissance. The notion that music could be interpreted in a meaningful way clashed regularly with evidence that music was in fact profoundly ...
More
Music was a subject of considerable debate during the Renaissance. The notion that music could be interpreted in a meaningful way clashed regularly with evidence that music was in fact profoundly promiscuous in its application and effects. Subsequently, much writing in the period reflects a desire to ward off music's illegibility rather than come to terms with its actual effects. This book revises our understanding of music's relationship to language in Renaissance England. It shows the degree to which discussions of music were ideologically and politically charged. Offering a historically nuanced account of the early modern debate over music, along with close readings of several of Shakespeare's plays (including Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, and The Winter's Tale) and Milton's A Maske, the book challenges the consensus that music's affinity with poetry was widely accepted, or even desired, by Renaissance poets. Shakespeare, more than any other early modern poet, exposed the fault lines in the debate about music's function in art, repeatedly staging disruptive scenes of music that expose an underlying struggle between textual and sensuous authorities. Such musical interventions in textual experiences highlight the significance of sound as an aesthetic and sensory experience independent of any narrative function.Less
Music was a subject of considerable debate during the Renaissance. The notion that music could be interpreted in a meaningful way clashed regularly with evidence that music was in fact profoundly promiscuous in its application and effects. Subsequently, much writing in the period reflects a desire to ward off music's illegibility rather than come to terms with its actual effects. This book revises our understanding of music's relationship to language in Renaissance England. It shows the degree to which discussions of music were ideologically and politically charged. Offering a historically nuanced account of the early modern debate over music, along with close readings of several of Shakespeare's plays (including Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, and The Winter's Tale) and Milton's A Maske, the book challenges the consensus that music's affinity with poetry was widely accepted, or even desired, by Renaissance poets. Shakespeare, more than any other early modern poet, exposed the fault lines in the debate about music's function in art, repeatedly staging disruptive scenes of music that expose an underlying struggle between textual and sensuous authorities. Such musical interventions in textual experiences highlight the significance of sound as an aesthetic and sensory experience independent of any narrative function.
Roger J. Porter
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449871
- eISBN:
- 9780801460968
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449871.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
There has been a noticeable and surprising number of memoirs recently published by adult children whose fathers have led secret lives. Some of the fathers had second families; some had secret ...
More
There has been a noticeable and surprising number of memoirs recently published by adult children whose fathers have led secret lives. Some of the fathers had second families; some had secret religious lives; others have been criminals, liars, or con men. This book explores the phenomenon in great depth. It examines a large number of these works, placing them in a wide literary and cultural context and considering the ethical quandaries writers face when they reveal secrets so long and closely held. Among the books the book treats are Paul Auster's The Invention of Solitude, Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir Fun Home, Essie Mae Washington-Williams's Dear Senator (on her father, Strom Thurmond), Bliss Broyard's One Drop, Mary Gordon's The Shadow Man, and Geoffrey Wolff's The Duke of Deception. The book also discusses Nathaniel Kahn's documentary film, My Architect. These narratives inevitably look inward to the writer as well as outward to the parent. The autobiographical children are compelled, if not consumed, by a desire to know. They become detectives, piecing together clues to fill memory voids, assembling material and archival evidence, public and private documents, letters, photographs, and iconic physical objects to track down the parent.Less
There has been a noticeable and surprising number of memoirs recently published by adult children whose fathers have led secret lives. Some of the fathers had second families; some had secret religious lives; others have been criminals, liars, or con men. This book explores the phenomenon in great depth. It examines a large number of these works, placing them in a wide literary and cultural context and considering the ethical quandaries writers face when they reveal secrets so long and closely held. Among the books the book treats are Paul Auster's The Invention of Solitude, Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir Fun Home, Essie Mae Washington-Williams's Dear Senator (on her father, Strom Thurmond), Bliss Broyard's One Drop, Mary Gordon's The Shadow Man, and Geoffrey Wolff's The Duke of Deception. The book also discusses Nathaniel Kahn's documentary film, My Architect. These narratives inevitably look inward to the writer as well as outward to the parent. The autobiographical children are compelled, if not consumed, by a desire to know. They become detectives, piecing together clues to fill memory voids, assembling material and archival evidence, public and private documents, letters, photographs, and iconic physical objects to track down the parent.
Timothy Melley
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801451232
- eISBN:
- 9780801465918
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801451232.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
In 2010 the U.S. Embassy in Kabul acknowledged that it was providing major funding for thirteen episodes of Eagle Four—a new Afghani television melodrama based loosely on the blockbuster U.S. series ...
More
In 2010 the U.S. Embassy in Kabul acknowledged that it was providing major funding for thirteen episodes of Eagle Four—a new Afghani television melodrama based loosely on the blockbuster U.S. series 24. Eagle Four was part of a strategy aimed at transforming public suspicion of security forces into respect. Why would a wartime government spend resources on a melodrama of covert operations? The answer is not simply that fiction has real political effects but that, since the Cold War, fiction has become integral to the growth of national security as a concept and a transformation of democracy. This book links this cultural shift to the birth of the national security state in 1947. As the United States developed a vast infrastructure of clandestine organizations, it shielded policy from the public sphere and gave rise to a new cultural imaginary, “the covert sphere.” One of the surprising consequences of state secrecy is that citizens must rely substantially on fiction to “know,” or imagine, their nation's foreign policy. The potent combination of institutional secrecy and public fascination with the secret work of the state was instrumental in fostering the culture of suspicion and uncertainty that has plagued American society ever since—and, the book argues, that would eventually find its fullest expression in postmodernism. The book traces these consequences from the Korean War through the War on Terror, examining how a regime of psychological operations and covert action has made the conflation of reality and fiction a central feature of both U.S. foreign policy and American culture.Less
In 2010 the U.S. Embassy in Kabul acknowledged that it was providing major funding for thirteen episodes of Eagle Four—a new Afghani television melodrama based loosely on the blockbuster U.S. series 24. Eagle Four was part of a strategy aimed at transforming public suspicion of security forces into respect. Why would a wartime government spend resources on a melodrama of covert operations? The answer is not simply that fiction has real political effects but that, since the Cold War, fiction has become integral to the growth of national security as a concept and a transformation of democracy. This book links this cultural shift to the birth of the national security state in 1947. As the United States developed a vast infrastructure of clandestine organizations, it shielded policy from the public sphere and gave rise to a new cultural imaginary, “the covert sphere.” One of the surprising consequences of state secrecy is that citizens must rely substantially on fiction to “know,” or imagine, their nation's foreign policy. The potent combination of institutional secrecy and public fascination with the secret work of the state was instrumental in fostering the culture of suspicion and uncertainty that has plagued American society ever since—and, the book argues, that would eventually find its fullest expression in postmodernism. The book traces these consequences from the Korean War through the War on Terror, examining how a regime of psychological operations and covert action has made the conflation of reality and fiction a central feature of both U.S. foreign policy and American culture.
Eric B. Song
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801451850
- eISBN:
- 9780801468094
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801451850.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Milton Studies
This book offers a reading of John Milton's major writings, finding in them a fundamental impasse that explains their creative power. According to the book, a divided view of creation governs ...
More
This book offers a reading of John Milton's major writings, finding in them a fundamental impasse that explains their creative power. According to the book, a divided view of creation governs Milton's related systems of cosmology, theology, art, and history. For Milton, any coherent entity—a nation, a poem, or even the new world—must be carved out of and guarded against an original unruliness. Despite being sanctioned by God, however, this agonistic mode of creation proves ineffective because it continues to manifest internal rifts that it can never fully overcome. This dilemma is especially pronounced in Milton's later writings, including Paradise Lost, where all forms of creativity must strive against the fact that chaos precedes order and that disruptive forces will continue to reemerge, seemingly without end. The book explores the many ways in which Milton transforms an intractable problem into the grounds for incisive commentary and politically charged artistry. This argument brings into focus topics ranging from Milton's recurring allusions to the Eastern Tartars, the way Milton engages with country house poetry and colonialist discourses in Paradise Lost, and the lasting relevance of Anglo-Irish affairs for his late writings. The book concludes with a new reading of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes in which it shows how Milton's integration of conflicting elements forms the heart of his literary archive and confers urgency upon his message even as it reaches its future readers.Less
This book offers a reading of John Milton's major writings, finding in them a fundamental impasse that explains their creative power. According to the book, a divided view of creation governs Milton's related systems of cosmology, theology, art, and history. For Milton, any coherent entity—a nation, a poem, or even the new world—must be carved out of and guarded against an original unruliness. Despite being sanctioned by God, however, this agonistic mode of creation proves ineffective because it continues to manifest internal rifts that it can never fully overcome. This dilemma is especially pronounced in Milton's later writings, including Paradise Lost, where all forms of creativity must strive against the fact that chaos precedes order and that disruptive forces will continue to reemerge, seemingly without end. The book explores the many ways in which Milton transforms an intractable problem into the grounds for incisive commentary and politically charged artistry. This argument brings into focus topics ranging from Milton's recurring allusions to the Eastern Tartars, the way Milton engages with country house poetry and colonialist discourses in Paradise Lost, and the lasting relevance of Anglo-Irish affairs for his late writings. The book concludes with a new reading of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes in which it shows how Milton's integration of conflicting elements forms the heart of his literary archive and confers urgency upon his message even as it reaches its future readers.
Laurent Dubreuil
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450563
- eISBN:
- 9780801467516
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450563.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The relationship between power and language has been a central theme in critical theory for decades now, yet there is still much to be learned about the sheer force of language in the world in which ...
More
The relationship between power and language has been a central theme in critical theory for decades now, yet there is still much to be learned about the sheer force of language in the world in which we live. This book explores the power-language phenomenon in the context of European and, particularly, French colonialism and its aftermath. Through readings of the colonial experience, it isolates a phraseology based on possession, in terms of both appropriation and haunting, that has persisted throughout the centuries. Not only is this phraseology a legacy of the past, it is still active today, especially in literary renderings of the colonial experience—but also, and more paradoxically, in anticolonial discourse. This phrase shaped the teaching of European languages in the (former) empires, and it tried to configure the usage of those idioms by the “Indigenes.” Then, scholarly disciplines have to completely reconsider their discursive strategies about the colonial, if, at least, they attempt to speak up. The book examines diverse texts, from political speeches, legal documents, and colonial treatises to anthropological essays, poems of the Négritude, and contemporary rap, ever attuned to the linguistic strategies that undergird colonial power. Equally conversant in both postcolonial criticism and poststructuralist scholarship on language, but also deeply grounded in the sociohistorical context of the colonies, the book sets forth the conditions for an authentically postcolonial scholarship, one that acknowledges the difficulty of getting beyond a colonialism—and still maintains the need for an afterward.Less
The relationship between power and language has been a central theme in critical theory for decades now, yet there is still much to be learned about the sheer force of language in the world in which we live. This book explores the power-language phenomenon in the context of European and, particularly, French colonialism and its aftermath. Through readings of the colonial experience, it isolates a phraseology based on possession, in terms of both appropriation and haunting, that has persisted throughout the centuries. Not only is this phraseology a legacy of the past, it is still active today, especially in literary renderings of the colonial experience—but also, and more paradoxically, in anticolonial discourse. This phrase shaped the teaching of European languages in the (former) empires, and it tried to configure the usage of those idioms by the “Indigenes.” Then, scholarly disciplines have to completely reconsider their discursive strategies about the colonial, if, at least, they attempt to speak up. The book examines diverse texts, from political speeches, legal documents, and colonial treatises to anthropological essays, poems of the Négritude, and contemporary rap, ever attuned to the linguistic strategies that undergird colonial power. Equally conversant in both postcolonial criticism and poststructuralist scholarship on language, but also deeply grounded in the sociohistorical context of the colonies, the book sets forth the conditions for an authentically postcolonial scholarship, one that acknowledges the difficulty of getting beyond a colonialism—and still maintains the need for an afterward.
Heather Hirschfeld
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801452741
- eISBN:
- 9780801470639
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801452741.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This book recovers the historical specificity and the conceptual vigor of the term “satisfaction” during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Focusing on the term's significance as an ...
More
This book recovers the historical specificity and the conceptual vigor of the term “satisfaction” during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Focusing on the term's significance as an organizing principle of Christian repentance, the book examines the ways in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries dramatized the consequences of its re- or de-valuation in the process of Reformation doctrinal change. The Protestant theology of repentance, the book suggests, underwrote a variety of theatrical plots “to set things right” in a world shorn of the prospect of “making enough” (satisfacere). The book traces today's use of “satisfaction”-as an unexamined measure of inward gratification rather than a finely nuanced standard of relational exchange-to the pressures on legal, economic, and marital discourses wrought by the Protestant rejection of the Catholic sacrament of penance (contrition, confession, satisfaction) and represented imaginatively on the stage. In so doing, it offers fresh readings of the penitential economies of canonical plays including Dr. Faustus, The Revenger's Tragedy, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello; considers the doctrinal and generic importance of lesser-known plays including Enough Is as Good as a Feast and Love's Pilgrimage; and opens new avenues into the study of literature and repentance in early modern England.Less
This book recovers the historical specificity and the conceptual vigor of the term “satisfaction” during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Focusing on the term's significance as an organizing principle of Christian repentance, the book examines the ways in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries dramatized the consequences of its re- or de-valuation in the process of Reformation doctrinal change. The Protestant theology of repentance, the book suggests, underwrote a variety of theatrical plots “to set things right” in a world shorn of the prospect of “making enough” (satisfacere). The book traces today's use of “satisfaction”-as an unexamined measure of inward gratification rather than a finely nuanced standard of relational exchange-to the pressures on legal, economic, and marital discourses wrought by the Protestant rejection of the Catholic sacrament of penance (contrition, confession, satisfaction) and represented imaginatively on the stage. In so doing, it offers fresh readings of the penitential economies of canonical plays including Dr. Faustus, The Revenger's Tragedy, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello; considers the doctrinal and generic importance of lesser-known plays including Enough Is as Good as a Feast and Love's Pilgrimage; and opens new avenues into the study of literature and repentance in early modern England.
A.S. Byatt
About Time
The Absurd in Literature
Acceptable Words
Accident Society
Across Meridians
Activist Poetics
Against Democracy
An Age of Melodrama
