Hamlet In Purgatory - 01 edition

Greenblatt, Stephen : Harvard University

Stephen Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor at Harvard University, where he teaches English and chairs the Concentration in History and Literature. He is the author of, among other books, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, Shakespearean Negotiations, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World, and (with Catherine Gallagher) Practicing New Historicism. He is also a founding editor of Representations, general editor of The Norton Shakespeare, associate general editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, and president of the Modern Language Association.

"Greenblatt's fascination with ghostly texts is contagious, and he is virtually unequaled among literary critics as a prose stylist. . . . [Hamlet in Purgatory] greatly succeeds in bringing alive the powerful complex of fear and longing Shakespeare so deftly deployed. Required reading for those who study Shakespeare, this graceful analysis should also give considerable pleasure to those who merely enjoy him."

--Publishers Weekly

"Hamlet in Purgatory neither pretends to solve the mysteries of the play nor indulges in fruitless speculation about Shakespeare's own sectarian allegiances. Instead, it offers masterly accounts first of the history of the idea of Purgatory and its decline, then of the importance of ghosts and related apparitions in the whole range of Shakespeare's plays. . . . Profoundly original."

--Jonathan Bate, The Sunday Telegraph

"Greenblatt . . . argues with great elegance and ingenuity . . . [He] offers masterly accounts first of the history of the idea of Purgatory and its decline, then of the importance of ghosts and related apparitions in the whole range of Shakespeare's plays."

--Jonathan Bate, Sunday Telegraph

"[A] highly instructive investigation of the role of spirits from the other world in Shakespeare. [Greenblatt's] writing here is poised, precise, and . . . eloquent. . . . Hamlet in Purgatory is an exemplary work of historically informed literary interpretation."

--Robert Alter, New York Times Book Review

"A learned and persuasive book."

--John Bossy, London Review of Books

"[An] astonishing work of historical reconstruction. . . . [Greenblatt] has taken on the challenge of defamiliarizing the most famous play in Western literature by placing it in its proper theological setting. . . . [W]hile he must definitely rank as the most influential and knowledgeable of all the New Historicists he now shows himself in this book as something more, much more."

--Edward T. Oakes, Commonweal

Princeton University Press Web Site, April, 2003

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter One: A Poet's Fable
Chapter Two: Imagining Purgatory
Chapter Three: The Rights of Memory
Chapter Four: Staging Ghosts
Chapter Five: Remember Me
Epilogue
Notes
Index