Romance and Reformation: The Erasmian Spirit of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure

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University of Delaware Press, 2000 - Drama - 189 pages
It examines an assumption central to Shakespeare's inherited humanist tradition: that literature, and particularly drama, is capable of promoting a better society and it finds Shakespeare interrogating this assumption, asking whether drama that has been fashioned according to reformist principles of the great humanist educator Erasmus can, after all, achieve the remediating effects it seeks.

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Contents

The Logos in the Humanist Rhetorical Tradition
24
Measure for Measure as Comic Romance
55
Fornication and Calumny The Conceptual Structure of Measure for Measure
69
Factionalism and Social Reform The Dilemma of Humanist Drama
88
The Rhetoric of the Logos in Measure for Measure
102
Redemption and Damnation Measure for Measure and Othello as Contrasting Paired Visions
150
Notes
157
Works Cited
176
Index
185
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