Satisfactions of the Renaissance: Revenge Tragedy and the English Reformation

FAIN: FT-54758-07

Heather Anne Hirschfeld
University of Tennessee, Knoxville (Knoxville, TN 37916-3801)

This project examines the ways in which English Renaissance revenge tragedy dramatizes the conceptual implications of Reformation doctrinal change. Looking at a range of scriptural, patristic, Reform, and Counter-Reform teachings on reparation and atonement, I argue for a historic shift during the period in the meaning and experience of satisfying for sin. I then chart, in relation to this claim, treatments of vengeance by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, arguing that their presentation of ever-escalating strategies of revenge serves as dramatic testimony to the ways in which Reformation theologies heightened the autonomy of the human subject at the cost of its efficacy.