Overview
Few subjects of the English stage have proved more alluring and enduring than religious conversion. The emergence of the Elizabethan theatre marked a profound shift in the way in which conversion was presented. If medieval drama had encouraged conversion without reservation, early Elizabethan plays started to question it. Considering over forty canonical and lesser known works, this study argues that more so than any other medium, early modern drama engaged with the question of the possibility of undergoing a radical transformation in faith and presented the period's understanding of it as fundamentally unsettled. Offering the first cross-religious exploration of conversion in early modern English drama, and presenting a new reading of William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello, Lieke Stelling reveals telling patterns in the stage's treatment of conversion and religious identity.
Full Product Details
Author: Lieke Stelling (Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.00cm
, Height: 1.20cm
, Length: 23.00cm
Weight: 0.340kg
ISBN: 9781108701822
ISBN 10: 1108701825
Pages: 229
Publication Date: 08 October 2020
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
'Religious Conversion in Early Modern English Drama offers a wonderfully controversial and compelling account of spiritual and interfaith conversions on the early modern English stage. Reading plays like Dr Faustus, The Renegado, Othello, and many others alongside sermons, pamphlets, travel writings, and personal narratives, Lieke Stelling enriches and updates our understanding of the confluence of religion and drama in the period. A wide variety of scholars will find this an important and engaging book.' Kurt Schreyer, University of Missouri, St Louis 'Drawing on a wide range of canonical and non-canonical plays, Lieke Stelling makes a compelling case that the theatre is a central locus for debating religious conversion within and between religious faiths. This book will be of interest to scholars of early modern drama, but it should also be read by historians of the Reformation and of early modern religious identity more generally.' Adrian Streete, University of Glasgow
Author Information
Lieke Stelling is Assistant Professor in English at Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands. She has published articles on early modern literature in English Literary Renaissance and Shakespeare Jahrbuch, and co-edited The Turn of The Soul: Representations of Religious Conversion in Early Modern Art and Literature, with Harald Hendrix and Todd M. Richardson (2012).
