Shakespeare's Historical Background and the World Picture of the Elizabethan AgeGRIN Verlag, 2007 M03 8 - 22 páginas Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, course: HS Shakespeare's Major Tragedies, language: English, abstract: William Shakespeare may never have existed – or at least that is the point some scholars are trying to make. This paper is going to follow the opinion of the vast majority of literary experts and assume that Shakespeare did, in fact, exist. But mere existence is never enough. “No man is an island, entire of itself,” as John Donne liked to put it. The environment you live in and the surroundings that influence and inspire you are utterly significant. Future historians ourselves, we were taught that the present is a time span that doesn’t even last three seconds. After that, it’s the past. But the past is not the same as “history” itself. History is what historiographers have managed to reconstruct of the past, using archaeological, philological, literary, and other sources. As we are happy enough to know a lot about Shakespeare’s times, it would be foolhardy and arrogant to ignore this knowledge and focus on the plays themselves, letting the circumstances that they were written in slip out of our range of view. It may be taken for granted that Shakespeare was indeed influenced by his historical environment, but nobody can say for sure to what extent. What if Shakespeare had lived in ancient Roman times or in the Cold War period? Would he have written different plays? To decide to what extent he was influenced is the task of those scholars who actually do research on the plays. This paper, however, will focus on the actual socio-political, economic, and religious background of Sir William Shakespeare, particularly on the rule of Elizabeth I and James I and on the Elizabethan World Picture with its various manifestations in the English state during Shakespeare’s lifetime. |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
Shakespeare's Historical Background and the World Picture of the Elizabethan Age Christian R. Schwab Vista previa limitada - 2007 |
Términos y frases comunes
2.2 Henry VIII 7.2 The Macrocosm air and fire Analogy and Correspondences aspect beasts Bedford Companion bird body politic book of Homilies Cambride University Press Cambridge chain Chatto & Windus Companion to Shakespeare created culture Das elisabethanische Zeitalter E. M. W. Tillyard earth earthly spheres economic elisabethanische Zeitalter Elizabethan Age Elizabethan notion Elizabethan world order Elizabethan World Picture Ernst Klett Verlag existence four humours frame of order gave credence Golden Age hand hath nature Hierarchical Order hierarchical system human James John Donne king Klett Verlag 1998 London loveth man´s mankind Mary Meaning of Order Middle Ages moist moon Moreover Muir and Samuel nutshell organized world original sin Parliament primate Reclam ruler Samuel Schoenbaum 1980 seven planets Shakespeare Studies stairs starry sky step Stuttgart system of categories Thomas Elyot tillyard seite Troilus and Cressida Tudor Dynasty Ulrich Suerbaum underlines unique place University Press 1980 Uwe Baumann William Shakespeare Zeit zitiert