Shakespeare and the Mystery of God's Judgments

Shakespeare and the Mystery of God's Judgments
Author :
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
Total Pages : 220
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780820338545
ISBN-13 : 0820338540
Rating : 4/5 (540 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Shakespeare and the Mystery of God's Judgments by : Robert G. Hunter

Download or read book Shakespeare and the Mystery of God's Judgments written by Robert G. Hunter and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert G. Hunter maintains that the impact of the Protestant Reformation on the Elizabethan mind was in great part responsible for the emergence of the outstanding tragedies of the age. Luther and Calvin caused men to ask how God can be just if man is not free, and Shakespeare's greatest tragedies confront the vexing problems posed by these altered conceptions of man's freedom of will and God's providential control of natural circumstance. Shakespeare's audiences were not single-minded. He wrote for semi-Pelagians, Augustinians, Calvinists, and men and women who did not know what to think. Confl icting certainties, doubts, and uncertainties were his raw material, both within his mind and the minds of the audience. Hunter shows how Shakespeare uses the major attitudes toward God's judgment in creating Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear. He notes that Shakespeare's different viewpoints are the heart of the tragedies themselves. Even after Shakespeare's imaginative considerations of the mysteries, the tragedies seem to consistently provide questions rather than answers, and what they inspire in their beholders is more likely to be doubt than faith.


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