Shakespeare, Catholicism, and the Middle Ages : maimed rights / Alfred Thomas.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thomas, Alfred, 1958- author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

New Middle Ages (Palgrave (Firm))

The new Middle Ages

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English drama.

English drama--Early modern and Elizabethan.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Criticism and interpretation.

Shakespeare, William.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.

Criticism and interpretation.

English drama--Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600--Medieval influences.

Middle Ages in literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xv, 260 pages : color illustrations ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, [2018]

Summary:

Whereas traditional scholarship assumed that William Shakespeare used the medieval past as a negative foil to legitimate the present, Shakespeare, Catholicism, and the Middle Ages offers a revisionist perspective, arguing that the playwright valorizes the Middle Ages in order to critique the oppressive nature of the Tudor-Stuart state. In examining Shakespeare's Richard II, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Winter's Tale, the text explores how Shakespeare repossessed the medieval past to articulate political and religious dissent. By comparing these and other plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries with their medieval analogues, Alfred Thomas argues that Shakespeare was an ecumenical writer concerned with promoting tolerance in a highly intolerant and partisan age.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

3319902172

9783319902173

OCLC:

1029473270