| FT-54758-07 | Research Programs: Summer Stipends | Heather Anne Hirschfeld | Satisfactions of the Renaissance: Revenge Tragedy and the English Reformation | 6/1/2007 - 7/31/2007 | $5,000.00 | Heather | Anne | Hirschfeld | | | | University of Tennessee, Knoxville | Knoxville | TN | 37916-3801 | USA | 2007 | British Literature | Summer Stipends | Research Programs | 5000 | 0 | 5000 | 0 |
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. |