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What can I do? To what degree do we control our own desires, actions, and fate - or not? These questions haunt us, and have done so, in various forms, for thousands of years. Timothy Rosendale explores the problem of human will and action relative to the Divine - which Luther himself identified as the central issue of the Reformation - and its manifestations in English literary texts from 1580-1670. After an introduction which outlines the broader issues from Sophocles and the Stoics to twentieth-century philosophy, the opening chapter traces the theological history of the agency problem from the New Testament to the seventeenth century. The following chapters address particular aspects of volition and salvation (will, action, struggle, and blame) in the writings of Marlowe, Kyd, Shakespeare, Ford, Herbert, Donne, and Milton, who tackle these problems with an urgency and depth that resonate with parallel concerns today.

English literature --- History and criticism. --- Religion in literature. --- Will in literature. --- Religion in drama --- Religion in poetry

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The question of Shakespeare’s Catholic contexts has occupied many scholars in recent years, and their growing body of work has been enriched by revisionist accounts of the Reformation society and culture in which he lived and worked. This innovative book brings together sixteen original essays by leading scholars who examine Shakespeare’s works in light of this new scholarship: their goal is to explore a possible interpretive consensus from Protestant, Catholic, and secular perspectives. Offering stimulating new approaches to traditional problems in Shakespeare studies, the essays provide a fully developed picture of Shakespeare’s relation to the Reformation—in the light of newly unearthed religious contexts. From the monastic life in Measure for Measure to Puritanism in Hamlet , the essays offer fresh understandings of such themes as majority cultures, national self-definition, hidden trauma, and concealed identity. Contributors: Dennis Taylor, Richard Dutton, Katharine Goodland, Clare Asquith, Jean-Christophe Mayer, Timothy Rosendale, Gary D. Hamilton, Regina M. Buccola, John Klause, John Freeman, R. Chris Hassel Jr., Jennifer Rust, David Beauregard, Maurice Hunt, Lisa Hopkins, Richard Mallette, and Paula McQuade.