Shakespeare and the Grace of Words: A Doxological Reading of "King Lear" and "The Winter's Tale"
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis explores the connections between theology and literature through a doxological approach, an understanding of all language as grounded in praise for the divine. My textual analyses of Shakespeare’s plays both instantiate and complement this approach, learning from insights from the literary tradition while attending to the theological compass of the poetic. Part One sketches my methodological approach. Chapter 1 explores scholarship on Shakespeare and religion and notes that contemporary literary approaches have struggled with reading language and religion in terms of an ontology of power which divorces words from the real. Taking my cue from theologically inflected readings of Shakespeare, as well as more supple metaphysical accounts, I suggest an approach to language that is relational, performative and metaphysically ‘participatory’ and which can thus account for a notion of ‘gift’, or ‘grace’. Chapter 2 draws a connection between Shakespeare and Nicholas of Cusa, as a distinct theological voice that can help further my account. In his late works, Cusa suggests a doxological turn, showing that praise is a mode of speech that is also a mode of knowledge, culminating in participation with God, who is ‘The First Praise’. I show that speech as praise is both a performative, poetic response to and voicing of ‘the First Praise’ that has always already called us into speech. The doxological approach culminates in ‘liturgical’ speech, a donative mode of language which unites theatricality and truth, art and nature, potency and being, and offers redeemed relationships and blessings and care for the material world. Part Two develops this approach through my readings of King Lear (Chapter 3) and The Winter’s Tale (Chapter 4). Taking language as such as my hermeneutical key, I associate to the transition between the two plays a narrative of language’s fall away from, and return to, its doxological roots. In King Lear, the transformation of love-speech into a techn…
abstract: This thesis explores the connections between theology and literature through a doxological approach, an understanding of all language as grounded in praise for the divine. My textual analyses of Shakespeare’s plays both instantiate and complement this approach, learning from insights from the literary tradition while attending to the theological compass of the poetic. Part One sketches my methodological approach. Chapter 1 explores scholarship on Shakespeare and religion and notes that contemporary literary approaches have struggled with reading language and religion in terms of an ontology of power which divorces words from the real. Taking my cue from theologically inflected readings of Shakespeare, as well as more supple metaphysical accounts, I suggest an approach to language that is relational, performative and metaphysically ‘participatory’ and which can thus account for a notion of ‘gift’, or ‘grace’. Chapter 2 draws a connection between Shakespeare and Nicholas of Cusa, as a distinct theological voice that can help further my account. In his late works, Cusa suggests a doxological turn, showing that praise is a mode of speech that is also a mode of knowledge, culminating in participation with God, who is ‘The First Praise’. I show that speech as praise is both a performative, poetic response to and voicing of ‘the First Praise’ that has always already called us into speech. The doxological approach culminates in ‘liturgical’ speech, a donative mode of language which unites theatricality and truth, art and nature, potency and being, and offers redeemed relationships and blessings and care for the material world. Part Two develops this approach through my readings of King Lear (Chapter 3) and The Winter’s Tale (Chapter 4). Taking language as such as my hermeneutical key, I associate to the transition between the two plays a narrative of language’s fall away from, and return to, its doxological roots. In King Lear, the transformation of love-speech into a techn…
author: Gerlier, Valentin
language: eng
keywords: Doxology, King Lear, Nicholas of Cusa, Praise, Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale, Theology, Theology and Literature
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/f49c20f2-02ec-41b0-9d2c-13566969cacd/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2020-06-28
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:13Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.60486