Seeming Knowledge: Shakespeare and Skeptical Faith

Seeming Knowledge: Shakespeare and Skeptical Faith

by John D. Cox
ISBN-10:
1932792953
ISBN-13:
9781932792959
Pub. Date:
09/04/2007
Publisher:
Baylor University Press
ISBN-10:
1932792953
ISBN-13:
9781932792959
Pub. Date:
09/04/2007
Publisher:
Baylor University Press
Seeming Knowledge: Shakespeare and Skeptical Faith

Seeming Knowledge: Shakespeare and Skeptical Faith

by John D. Cox
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Overview

Seeming Knowledge revisits the question of Shakespeare and religion by focusing on the conjunction of faith and skepticism in his writing. Cox argues that the relationship between faith and skepticism is not an invented conjunction. The recognition of the history of faith and skepticism in the sixteenth century illuminates a tradition that Shakespeare inherited and represented more subtly and effectively than any other writer of his generation.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781932792959
Publisher: Baylor University Press
Publication date: 09/04/2007
Series: Studies in Christianity and Literature , #1
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 365
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.29(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

John D. Cox (Ph.D. University of Chicago) is the DuMez Professor of English at Hope College.

Table of Contents

1 Skepticism and Suspicion in Sixteenth-Century England

Part I: Genre

2 Comic Faith

3 Tragic Grace

4 History and Guilt

Part II: Idea

5 Politics

6 Ethics

7 Esthetics, Epistemology, Ontology

8 Shakespeare and the French Epistemologists

What People are Saying About This

John Cox offers a compelling account of the Christian premises of Shakespeare's plays, one that seeks neither to revive the complacent politics of the Elizabethan World Picture nor to drum up old factions by treating drama as coded theological polemic. Instead, Seeming Knowledge makes apparent how fully the faith informing Shakespeare's plays registers the duplicities of false consciousness and the opacity of mortal suffering, and also how little it owes to the Reformation. This is an immensely provocative and immensely thoughtful book.

David Jasper

This volume is a startling review of Renaissance English literature in a patient uncovering of the deep relationship between literature and religion - of religion in literature, that resituates Shakespeare in the history of Christian consciousness through his profound comedic sense of language and dramatic narrative at the heart of which may reside the hiddenness of God. This work deserves to be deeply pondered not only by students of Shakespeare, but by theologians and historians of the history of European ideas.

Dr. Jean-Christophe Mayer

Engaging and incisive throughout, Seeming Knowledge is impressive not only for its vast, in-depth coverage of Shakespeare's works, but also for its compelling argumentation. John Cox is extremely well-read in early Tudor and Elizabethan theater and also in the works of Erasmus, More, Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal and others. His application of these works to Shakespeare is subtle and original. His book is in fact a powerful invitation to rethink our usual understanding of skepticism in the Renaissance and in Shakespeare. By being skeptical of skepticism, Cox profoundly redefines our view of Shakespeare's relation to faith and religion. This work is a major contribution to the field.

Sarah Beckwith

This fine, even magisterial book is immensely broad-ranging, original and full of brave new insights on the entire Shakespeare canon. Cox's readings are so assured that he makes this look easy, but there is a wealth of thought and erudition behind each sentence and he is one of the few Shakespeareans who really seems to understand medieval drama. Here is a Shakespearean who understands both medieval drama and the Christian narrative of fall and redemption as a serious intellectual and affective resource. I found the book moving and exhilarating to read.

Julia Reinhard Lupton

In this book, John Cox exercises his broad learning and generous interpretive vision in order to deliver us a Shakespeare whose plays occupy a capacious middle ground between faith and skepticism, a territory measured by the divine comedy of the Christian story, yet kept flexible and responsive to other perspectives and possibilities by the morally and mentally quickening habits of suspicion. By providing thoughtful thematic readings of Shakespeare's major plays, this book will appeal not only to scholars interested in the religious and intellectual parameters of Shakespearean drama, but also to educated general readers in search of wisdom from as well as about Shakespeare.

Debora Shuger

John Cox offers a compelling account of the Christian premises of Shakespeare's plays, one that seeks neither to revive the complacent politics of the Elizabethan World Picture nor to drum up old factions by treating drama as coded theological polemic. Instead, Seeming Knowledge makes apparent how fully the faith informing Shakespeare's plays registers the duplicities of false consciousness and the opacity of mortal suffering, and also how little it owes to the Reformation. This is an immensely provocative and immensely thoughtful book.

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