The Unheard Prayer

Religious Toleration in Shakespeare's Drama
Approx 229 Pp. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-90-04-23005-7
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 6, 224 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 239 mm, Gewicht: 408 g

Reihe: Studies in Religion and the Arts

Titus shoots his arrows bearing petitions for justice to the gods; Claudius asks ‘what form of prayer can serve my turn?’; Lear wishes he could crack the vault of heaven with his prayers. Again and again, Shakespeare dramatises the scenario of the unheard prayer, in which the one who prays does so full well in the knowledge that no one is listening, interested, or even there at all. The scenario is keyed to the anxieties that surrounded the act of praying itself, so full as it was with controversy, the centrepiece of sectarian dispute over what was good and bad religion. This study reads the unheard prayer scenario as itself an appeal for a vision of tolerance, unobtainable perhaps, but nevertheless desired and imagined.

Zielgruppe

All interested in prayer, Reformation English culture, and Shakespeare. Also those with interests in Shakespeare and religion, identity politics and secularisation.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sterrett, Joseph

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur

Über Autor(innen)

Sterrett, Joseph
Joseph Sterrett (PhD, Cardiff) is Assistant Professor of Literature in English at Aarhus University, Denmark.

Joseph Sterrett (PhD, Cardiff) is Assistant Professor of Literature in English at Aarhus University, Denmark.