Reformations of the Body Idolatry, Sacrifice, and Early Modern Theater [Paperback]

This project takes the human body and the bodily senses as joints that articulate new kinds of connections between church and theatre and overturns a longstanding notion about theatrical phenomenology in this period.1. Dead Idols and Lively Images: A Genealogy of Protestant Iconoclasm 2. Sacrament and Theater: Shakespeare's Lawful Magic 3. Theatrical Authorship and Providential Bodies: The Case of Doctor Faustus 4. Revenge, Sacrifice, and Post-Reformation Theater: The Spanish Tragedy 5. Shakespeare and Revenge: The Anthropology of Sacrifice in Titus Andronicus and Othello 6. Virgin Martyrs and Sacrificial Sovereigns: Thomas Dekker's Politic Bodies 7. Epilogue:Iconoclastic Bodies and Literary Technique: Oldcastle to Milton

Waldron's book gives us a refreshing and new account of the relations between Protestantism and Renaissance theater. She makes human liveliness central to both Protestant accounts of the reformation of the body and to the plays of Kyd, Marlowe, and especially Shakespeare. Taking issue with recent accounts of disenchantment and secularization she shows how Protestantism intensified rather than rejected some of the Christological and incarnational aesthetic theologies of Catholicism. This book deserves a very broad readership and will constitute an important contribution to current interests in religion and theater. - Sarah Beckwith, Professor of English, Theater, and Religion, Duke University, USA

In this timely and nuanced study, Waldron argues that the Protestant body transposes the incarnational aesthetics of medieval Christianity into new forms of connection and relationship that reinvest the world with divine presence and regenerative potential. She demonstrates how the body and the senses join the reformed church to the public theater, both of which rely on lively images to transmit truths and create community. Eschewing easy narratives of supercession and progress, Waldron discloses the tremulous ló#