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Article: Hamlet, Protestantism and the Mourning of Contingency: Not to Be.(Book review)
- Article from:
- Renaissance Quarterly
- Article date:
- December 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 The Renaissance Society of America. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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John E. Curran, Jr. Hamlet, Protestantism and the Mourning of Contingency: Not to Be.
Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2006. xxxii + 246 pp. index. bibl. $99.95. ISBN: 978-07546-5436-0.
In Hamlet, Protestantism and the Mourning of Contingency: Not to Be, John Curran argues for Hamlet's developing sense of restricted possibilities and meaningless action. In a play that "very much concerns itself with the painfulness of the transition from Catholicism to Protestantism" (3)--and where that Protestantism can be an extraordinarily numbing Calvinism--Hamlet's own evolution mirrors that painful transition. (Fifty years ago, Rebecca West wrote in The ...