Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency: Not to BeBuilding on current scholarly interest in the religious dimensions of the play, this study shows how Shakespeare uses Hamlet to comment on the Calvinistic Protestantism predominant around 1600. By considering the play's inner workings against the religious ideas of its time, John Curran explores how Shakespeare portrays in this work a completely deterministic universe in the Calvinist mode, and, Curran argues, exposes the disturbing aspects of Calvinism. By rendering a Catholic Prince Hamlet caught in a Protestant world which consistently denies him his aspirations for a noble life, Shakespeare is able in this play, his most theologically engaged, to delineate the differences between the two belief systems, but also to demonstrate the consequences of replacing the old religion so completely with the new. |
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... Hamlet's melancholy is diagnosable asa Renaissance development of late medieval plague psychology,orofthe morbid imagination(as Gersonsaid) of Western Christendom, withits increasingly materialized spirituality. Faustus' university is ...
... Hamlet's problems—or Hamlet's problematic. Apparently unhaunted and undaunted by predestination and justification by faith, our culture seems vexed andperplexed by anequally doctrinal Oedipus complex. Ernst Jones' Hamlet and Oedipus ...
... Shakespeare, “itisnotso muchthatFreud brought the Oedipus complextoHamlet as thatHamlet broughttheOedipus complex to Freud.”Aheroic Oedipus investigating hisveiledpast,the analyst/analysand also performsasa detectiveconfessor like Hamlet ...
... Hamlet himself.Hamlet's fatherdied full of bread: the remains leaveamess. Ifpeople areconstantly soiling themselves, theyneed churchly ministration toprovide relief from guiltand soilure.The sacraments implied a persistent cleaning upof ...
... Hamlet finally forces Claudius to“drink off [a] potion” with almost sacramental pretensions to itsbeing reserved for Hamlet. “Evenhanded justice/Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice/Toour ownlips,” asMacbeth moralizes the ...
Contents
TheLoss of Contingency 2TheBe the Eucharist and the Logic of Protestantism | |
4The Theater of Merit 5 Chastity andthe Strumpet Fortune 6 The BeProtestantism and Silence | |
Index | |
Other editions - View all
Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency: Not to Be John E. Curran Jr Limited preview - 2016 |
Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency: Not to Be John E. Curran Jr Limited preview - 2016 |
Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency: Not to be John E. Curran Limited preview - 2007 |