PAPER ACCEPTED FOR 2018 SEPTEMBER SW CCL I recently had another paper accepted, this one for the the 2018 Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature at Oklahoma Baptist University in late September. The theme of the conference is "Gathering in the Strange: Literary Vision in a Disenchanted World." Related to the theme of "the Strange," my paper will examine four works that echo aspects of the biblical Emmaus story about meeting Christ in the stranger. I have briefly written about two of these in past LinkedIn posts: In The Merchant of Venice https://lnkd.in/dynRAwu and in Hamlet https://lnkd.in/egrcrUa I'll also examine Emmaus plot elements in Flannery O'Connor's short story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find," and in (gasp!) the Disney film, Moana; this is especially striking once spotted in Moana. Welcoming the stranger exposes one to danger and enemies. But if we neglect the stranger out of fear, then we miss the chance to...
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Old King Hamlet as Caesar figure, not Christ figure After the death of King Hamlet, the sentinels are nervous confronting one another at the end of Francesco’s shift and the start of Bernardo’s. They are also anxious about why Denmark is so busy preparing for war. Shakespeare’s play was written at a time when many Protestants thought biblical prophecies in the biblical books of Revelations and Daniel were coming true (see Apocalypse & Armada in Kyd's Spanish Tragedy by Frank R. Ardolino); many believed the end times were approaching, and that Rome was the Whore of Babylon. The Dover Straits earthquake of 1580, a 1598 appearance of Haley’s Comet, and a 1598 total eclipse visible across much of England and Scotland (“disasters in the sun”) only increased such speculation. Bernardo and Marcellus tell Horatio about the hour of the night when the ghost had appeared and begin describing the positions of the stars, when the ghost appears again. After the ghost leaves, as Horatio...
HAMLET & OLIVIA: Mourning too long?
Stephen Greenblatt ("Shakespearean Negotiations") is among those scholars who note that Twelfth Night 's Olivia is a caricature of Elizabeth I, mourning the death of her father (HenryVIII, whom she idolized) and brother (young King Edward), and making excuses to avoid being courted for marriage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Night_(1996_film) Olivia's steward, Malvolio, may therefore be a caricature of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who in the play is toyed with as being possessed and gets a mock-exorcism (!), which (in the eyes of some, like Essex) Cecil deserved, of course. If the unnaturally mourning Olivia can be Eliz I, what about Hamlet? If Viola, and MofV's Portia, and AYLI's Rosalind, etc., can disguise themselves as males, then Hamlet can stand (at least in part) for an idealized Elizabeth, a recipe for how Elizabeth I might end her life and reconcile with James, that prince from the north, the son of her enemy, as Hamlet does with Fo...