Afterword / Margreta de Grazia and Brian Cummings. Acknowledgments -- Introduction: A hermeneutics of sacred and secular / Katherine Steele Brokaw and Jay Zysk -- Titus's infinite jest / William N. West -- Secularity meets Wonder Woman in All's well that ends well / Kent Cartwright -- Wooing words: secularizing language and the language of secularism in Much ado about nothing and Romeo and Juliet / Tobias Doring -- "Of government the properties to unfold": governmentalities in Measure for measure / Jennifer R. Rust -- Toward a coherent ideology of protoracism in the Renaissance, or the anachronism of would-be secular modern racism / Robert Hornback -- "Into the chapel": unmodern interiority and Quintilian inwardness in Hamlet / Jeanne H. McCarthy -- Leaving the place of conscience in All is true / Rachael Deagman -- "In this most desolate isle": The tempest and its sacred spaces / Helga Duncan -- Shakespeare and the hymnody of state / Angela Heetderks -- Mirror images: Mary and Hermione, idolatry and iconoclasm / Emma Maggie Solberg -- Afterword / Margreta de Grazia and Brian Cummings.
Summary:
"The term "secular" readily inspires thinking about disenchantment, periodization, modernity, and subjectivity. "Rethinking the Secular in the Age of Shakespeare" argues that Shakespeare's plays present "secularization" not only as a historical narrative of progress but also as a hermeneutic process that unleashes complex and often problematic transactions between sacred and secular that shape ideas about everything from pastoral government and performative language to wonder and the spatial imagination. At the heart of this volume is the conviction that thinking about Shakespeare and secularization also involves thinking about how to interpret history and temporality in the contexts of Shakespeare's medieval past, the religious reformations of the sixteenth century, and the critical dispositions that define Shakespeare studies as a scholarly field today. Inspired by, but also challenging, the "religious turn" in early modern studies as well as master narratives of secularization, our contributors reject a necessary opposition between "sacred" and "secular" and instead analyze how these categories intersect. In fresh analyses of plays ranging from "Hamlet" and "The Tempest" to "All's Well that Ends Well" and "All Is True," secularization emerges as an interpretive act that raises questions about the cultural protocols of representation within both Shakespeare's plays and the critical domains in which they are studied and taught. The volume's diverse disciplinary perspectives and theoretical approaches shift our focus from literal religion and doctrinal issues to such aspects of early modern culture as theatrical performance, geography, race, architecture, music, and the visual arts"--Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.