Article: Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy.(Review)

Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy. By MICHAEL NEILL. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1997. xiii + 404 pp. 45 [pounds sterling].

What Michael Neill adds to this decade's spate of books on death in the Renaissance is some vivid evocation of autopsy procedures, some plausible explanation of Dance of Death motifs, and some characteristically perceptive close readings of plays. He has surprisingly little to say about ethical, philosophical, or emotional 'issues of death', and little of what he has to say about sociological ones is surprising: individualism emerges in the Renaissance, and death, newly secularized, poses a threat to our ...

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