A well-argued Shakespeare theory that could strengthen the case for his Catholic sympathies.
A debut work of literary criticism analyzes The Winter’s Tale as a Roman Catholic allegory.
Though it is not often remembered, Shakespeare was born only a generation after the English Reformation, when the Church of England split from the Catholic Church and began to violently repress any who attempted to continue practicing Catholicism. Many have argued that Shakespeare himself bore latent Catholic sympathies, which are subtly alluded to in a number of his plays. Morrison takes it a step further by claiming that one play in particular, The Winter’s Tale (probably written in 1610 or 1611), is a hidden religious allegory presenting the beliefs and fears of Catholics living in secret under the oppressive reign of James I. While that might at first seem like an extreme claim, the author makes a textual argument “that relies upon surprisingly numerous and straightforward correlations between the language, themes, and plots in the play and the generally unambiguous and well-documented political realities of religious life in Shakespeare’s England.” The Winter’s Tale tells the story of a paranoid king who destroys his family, forcing his followers to make the difficult choice of whether to obey his orders or do what is right. Morrison argues that the play, which is at first tragic but ultimately has a happy ending, provides not only a criticism of the English crown’s treatment of Catholics, but also a model for reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants that Shakespeare hoped would one day come to pass. By examining the dialogue as well as some of the more idiosyncratic narrative choices and uses of geography, Morrison attempts to resurrect one of Shakespeare’s less popular works and reveal it for what it actually is: an ingenious act of political subversion and censorship evasion that only history’s greatest playwright could have pulled off. For a piece of literary criticism, Morrison’s prose is accessible and fluid: “When Leontes asks Camillo to poison Polixenes, Shakespeare illustrates one of the chief threats to Catholic doctrine and sacraments: pressure from secular powers to influence church policies and practices.” He takes care not to assume that readers know much about the play, its author, the time period in which it was written, or the backstory of the Anglican-Catholic schism. Readers do not need to have read The Winter’s Tale beforehand, and Morrison kindly recounts the plot first in summary and then in great detail. (In fact, being unfamiliar with the play may make readers more susceptible to his thesis.) But even readers who have previous associations with Leontes, Camillo, Antigonus, and the other characters should find it easy to become invested in Morrison’s argument, and will likely be flabbergasted by the connections he draws. The author’s claims are ultimately quite persuasive, though his theory may be the type that leads people back to the conclusions they already wanted to believe. Nevertheless, mysteries have long been a part of Shakespeare appreciation and Morrison identifies plenty of new places to look for clues.
A well-argued Shakespeare theory that could strengthen the case for his Catholic sympathies.Pub Date: June 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4905-6942-0
Page Count: 242
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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