Sacred and Secular Transactions in the Age of Shakespeare

by Katherine Steele Brokaw

"The term "secular" readily inspires thinking about disenchantment, periodization, modernity, and subjectivity. "Rethinking the Secular in the Age of Shakespeare" argues that Shakespeare's plays present "secularization" not only as a historical narrative of progress but also as a hermeneutic process that unleashes complex and often problematic transactions between sacred and secular that shape ideas about everything from pastoral government and performative language to wonder and the spatial imagination. At the heart of this volume is the conviction that thinking about Shakespeare and...