Believing in Shakespeare: Studies in Longing

Description

This ground breaking and accessible study explores the connections between the English Reformation's impact on the belief in eternal salvation and how it affected ways of believing in the plays of Shakespeare. Claire McEachern examines the new and better faith that Protestantism imagined for itself, a faith in which scepticism did not erode belief, but worked to substantiate it in ways that were both affectively positive and empirically positivist. Concluding with in-depth readings of Richard II, King Lear and The Tempest, the book represents a markedly fresh intervention in the topic of Shakespeare and religion. With great originality, McEachern argues that the English reception of the Calvinist imperative to 'know with' God allowed the very nature of literary involvement to change, transforming feeling for a character into feeling with one.

Claire McEachern is Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of The Poetics of English Nationhood, 1590-1612 (Cambridge, 1996); and editor of eight of Shakespeare's plays including the Arden 3 Much Ado About Nothing (2015). Her essay collections include the Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy, 2nd edition (Cambridge, 2015), and, with Debora Shuger, Religion and Culture in the English Renaissance (Cambridge, 1997).

'Written in an engaging style, sparkling with astute observations and humorous apercus, ... Many are the times the reader can be grateful for McEachern's recognition of us, as she strives to guide us through the complicated terrain of early modern belief.' Rana Choi, Renaissance Quarterly