Overview
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.
Full Product Details
Author: Joseph Sterrett
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Edition: Approx 229 Pp. ed.
Volume: 6
Dimensions:
Width: 15.50cm
, Height: 1.80cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.481kg
ISBN: 9789004230057
ISBN 10: 900423005
Pages: 188
Publication Date: 26 July 2012
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Available To Order
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Reviews
Spectators having read Sterrett's study are now ready to understand the full and complex implications of the visual display of prayers onstage. Ultimately, they are made to realize that Shakespeare actually fashioned a poetics of prayer aimed at distancing himself from sectarian disputes, while reflecting on the meaning of divine sanction and expressing the religious anxieties of his contemporaries. - Sophie Chiari, Aix-Marseille Universite (LERMA) in: Moreana Vol. 50 (2010). For the review click here. Another 'unexpectedly strong first book on faith in Shakespeare [...], In passionate yet judicious prose, Sterrett illuminates the dramaturgy of prayer as both object of controversy and equipment for living in order to tune his project to Shakespeare's entertainment of pluralist futures. - Julia Reinhard Lupton, University of California, Irvine. In: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 (SEL), vol 54 (2014).
Spectators having read Sterrett's study are now ready to understand the full and complex implications of the visual display of prayers onstage. Ultimately, they are made to realize that Shakespeare actually fashioned a poetics of prayer aimed at distancing himself from sectarian disputes, while reflecting on the meaning of divine sanction and expressing the religious anxieties of his contemporaries. - Sophie Chiari, Aix-Marseille Universite (LERMA) in: Moreana Vol. 50 (2010). For the review click here.
Author Information
Joseph Sterrett (PhD, Cardiff) is Assistant Professor of Literature in English at Aarhus University, Denmark.
