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Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England

Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England

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Adrian Streete
Cambridge University Press, 9/24/2009
EAN 9780521760171, ISBN10: 0521760178

Hardcover, 310 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm
Language: English

Containing detailed readings of plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe and Middleton, as well as poetry and prose, this book provides a major historical and critical reassessment of the relationship between early modern Protestantism and drama. Examining the complex and painful shift from late medieval religious culture to a society dominated by the ideas of the Reformers, Adrian Streete presents a fresh understanding of Reformed theology and the representation of early modern subjectivity. Through close analysis of major thinkers such as Augustine, William of Ockham, Erasmus, Luther and Calvin, the book argues for the profoundly Christological focus of Reformed theology and explores how this manifests itself in early modern drama. Moving beyond questions of authorial 'belief', Streete assesses Elizabethan and Jacobean drama's engagement with the challenges of the Reformation.

Introduction
Part I
1. Christ, subjectivity and representation in early modern culture
2. Locating the subject
Erasmus and Luther
3. Representing the subject
Calvin, Christ and identity
4. Perception and fantasy in early modern Protestant discourse
Part II
5. Anti-drama, anti-Church
debating the early modern theatre
6. Consummatum est
Calvinist exegesis, mimesis and Doctor Faustus
7. Shakespeare on Golgotha
political typology in Richard II
8. Mimesis, resistance and iconoclasm
resituating The Revenger's Tragedy
Afterword.