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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... the sacramentalsystem is dismantled,surely tellson Hamlet himself.Hamlet's fatherdied full of bread: the remains ... what sacraments confer in our extremity.In the Moralities (Everyman, Castle of Perseverance), Confession saves ...
... the academic grove, orJesus'on the Passover, yet it's undertaken withsome consciousness of what's owedGodor Nature. Hamlet, however, doesn't seemto feel there's something towards thatwill endhis life inone waybetter than another. Everylife ...
... the tightest constrictionthere can actually beboundless freedom.3 And yet Hamlet contravenes thisidea of boundlessness evenas he voices it, for he couches itnot as what he believes, butaswhathecould believeif itwere notfor his“bad ...
... what might bethe limits of our capacity to understand? Those limits being unknown, andit being undefined howfar anyone ofus might press toward them, our apprehension if notGod's becomesgodlike. Such isthegist of the famous ...
... the eliminationofallother ways truthfully to seeourselves. Weareat our coreathingnotonly vile but alsoutterly passiveand incapable of selfimprovement, a thing whoseblownabout movements carry no volition and no significance—and so thatis ...
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 |