About this title: Stephen Greenblatt sets out to explain his longtime fascination with the ghost of Hamlet's father, and his daring and ultimately gratifying journey takes him through surprising intellectual territory. It yields an extraordinary account of the rise and fall of Purgatory as both a belief and a lucrative institution - as well as a capacious new reading of the power of "Hamlet". In the mid-sixteenth century, English authorities abruptly changed the relationship between the living and dead. Declaring that Purgatory was a false "poem," they abolished the institutions and banned the practices that ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Princeton University Press, Ewing, New Jersey, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780691102573ISBN:0691102570
Description: Good. 0691102570 Light shelfwear, prev. owner's name neatly on flyleaf, about 4-5 pages have light pencil underlining. Good study/reading copy. read more
Edition: NEW ED
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Univ. PRESSES OF CALIFORNIA, COLUMBIA AND PRINCETON Country = UNITED STATES
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780691102573ISBN:0691102570
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 352 pages. (352 pages) with the doctrine of purgatory and the elaborate practices that grew up around it, the church had provided a powerful method of negotiating with the dead. this work explores the adventure narratives, ghost stories, pilgrimages, and imagery by which a belief in a grisly "prison house of souls" had been shaped and reinforced in the middle ages. 8 b&w plates, 10 halftones edition new ed (Paperback) read more
Edition: First Edition; First Printing
Binding: Cloth
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780691058733ISBN:0691058733
Description: New in New dust jacket. 0691058733. New and unread first edition, first printing cloth hardcover and dust jacket in excellent condition. Protective mylar cover.; 1.08 x 9.52 x 6.45 Inches; 320 pages. read more
Edition: First Edition; First Printing
Binding: Cloth
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780691058733ISBN:0691058733
Description: New in New dust jacket. 0691058733. New and unread first edition, first printing cloth hardcover and dust jacket in excellent condition. Protective mylar cover.; 1.08 x 9.52 x 6.45 Inches; 320 pages. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Princeton Univ Dept of Art &, Ewing, New Jersey, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780691058733ISBN:0691058733
Description: New. 0691058733. 322 pages--Interior text is clean, tight, and unmarked. Pages are intact and tight to the spine. From a review in "Publishers Weekly": "Greenblatt has made a name for himself both as a preeminent Shakespeare scholar and as one of the founders of the 'New Historicist' approach to literary criticism. Central to his approach is the notion that not only does history affect literature, but literature itself informs history, a claim its critics have generally either pursued without ... read more
Binding: Paper Back
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN-13:9780691058733ISBN:0691058733
Description: Second Hand. 8vo, xii + 322pp. Illustrated with color plates. Newly rebound in fine burgundy leatherette with gilt stamped title to spine. In perfect condition. A beautiful copy. read more
Description: New. "Beyond its brilliant illumination of "Hamlet, " Stephen Greenblatt's book uses historical evidence to probe the nature of human memory--by nature insistent, contradictory, in every sense haunted--as it copes with the stark, yet mysterious reality of... read more
Description: Good. 0691058733 Good condition. May have some markings & or shelfwear. All pages intact. Used items may not include extras such as infotrac, CD or other web access codes. read more
"Greenblatt is an author that digs far deeper into literature than many of us ever thought possible. Literature is not just what the author says, it is what historically, socially, culturally and religiously what was believed; what art and culture may have inspired and affected what was written. Greenblatt specifically takes the idea of Hamlet's father's ghost and discusses the belief system of Elizabethan England. The idea of purgatory - believed by the catholics, but discredited by Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. His analysis and discussions are far more interesting and complete than this review. Enjoy the book, whether you are interested in history, religion or Shakespeare."
"Greenblatt is a great researcher, a key trait that shines through in the early chapters of Hamlet in Purgatory, but also dims the reader's understanding of his overall goals. Probably this exploration of Purgatory's power and its effect on Hamlet and Greenblatt himself would have been better suited to a series of essays, rather than a five chapter book (it's a broad subject, after all). The whole effort feels very disjointed at times, with the first three chapters explaining Purgatory, its rites and the criticisms against it--without any mention of how these things will connect to later Elizabethan drama, or how they even connect together within the individual chapters themselves. A reader must push forward to reach clearer textual analysis, and it arrives in the last two chapters, primarily.
Strongest are the links that Greenblatt draws between the rites of remembering the dead and Hamlet's stress on honoring his ghostly father, though he eventually becomes so wrapped up in revenge, what he does can almost not be called a remembrance. The pull of Purgatory has a great sway over Hamlet, who is at times clearly depicted as Protestant, and so the thing he must do is culturally murky outside the obvious reasons, and hard to achieve because he struggles to find the right murderous ceremony through which to whisk his father from his dreary afterlife.
I had never thought of the religious pressures smothering the young Dane, and Greenblatt gives them great weight through dissection of various tracts by Simon Fish, Sir Thomas More and many spiritual leaders. He ferrets out the influences on Shakespeare's Hamlet and his sections on remembrances through alms for the dead are eloquent and startling in its potential humanist objections in a medieval world. For that alone, Hamlet in Purgatory is a great read for anyone interested in Shakespeare's work and religion.
(Side note: kudos to Greenblatt for sticking to the playwright's dramas, and drawing larger cultural concerns over them, rather than presuming personal influence that we can know nothing of; for that sort of conjecture, Will in the World is a fun read.)"
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