Classes » ENGL 448, Winter 2025

Name

Shakespeare, Genre, and Religion

Description

Shakespeare wrote during an age of social, political, and religious change. With each change of ruler, England shifted between being a Catholic and a Protestant nation, a tension that eased during the rule of Queen Elizabeth. Under the “Elizabethan compromise,” the state agreed not to “make windows into men’s souls,” so long as her subjects exhibited outward conformity to the national church. The dominant school of Shakespearian criticism since the 1980s has been new historicism, with its mantra to “always historicize.” New historical critics were hesitant to discuss the religious anxieties and energy of Shakespeare’s text, or, when they did, they equated the religious with the political, since religion and politics were so closely aligned during the early modern period. Recently, however, scholars within the “turn to religion” have been rediscovering the religious language of Shakespeare’s works, and the ways that his plays engage directly and indirectly with some of the major theological issues of his age, from evocations of the Eucharist, to representations of confession, to discussions the divine right of kings.

Credits

3.0

Semester

Winter 2025

Instructor

Dr. Richard Bergen

Schedules

Mondays, 13:30 to 14:50, West Campus Rm 302
Wednesdays, 13:30 to 14:50, West Campus Rm 302

Capacity

1/25

Tuition

$664.00
This tuition applies to domestic full-time students. Tuitions for international, senior, and auditing students may vary.

Fees

(None)