Hamlet in purgatory / Stephen Greenblatt.

Author
Greenblatt, Stephen, 1943- [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Εdition
Expanded edition.
Published/​Created
Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, 2013.
Description
360 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Details

Subject(s)
Summary note
This book delves into the author's 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 Christians relied on to ease the passage to Heaven for themselves and their dead loved ones. Greenblatt explores the fantastic 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. He probes the psychological benefits as well as the high costs of this belief and of its demolition.
Bibliographic references
Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-314) and index.
Action note
Committed to retain in perpetuity — ReCAP Shared Collection (HUL)
Contents
  • Prologue
  • A poet's fable
  • Imagining Purgatory
  • The rights of memory
  • Staging ghosts
  • Remember me
  • Epilogue.
Other title(s)
Project Muse UPCC books
ISBN
  • 0691160244 (pbk.)
  • 9780691160245 (pbk.)
  • 1400848091 (electronic bk.)
  • 9781400848096 (electronic bk.)
OCLC
864548171
RCP
H - S
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