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Knowing William Shakespeare better, we are better equipped to know his plays. Better knowing his plays brings us closer to knowing him. This book suggests that Shakespeare wrote not only for the mass audience, but simultaneously for that stratum of cognoscenti whom Gabriel Harvey dubbed 'the wiser sort.' It identifies many passages in the plays which Shakespeare resolves famous cruces which scholars have never been able to unravel, and casts new light on Shakespeare's mind and method. Shakespeare wrote into Julius Caesar more than one passage intelligible only to that handful of the wiser sort who had read Plutarch and knew their Suetonius. Into Macbeth Shakespeare injected a detail accessible only to the few intrepid souls brave or reckless enough to have cast the horoscope of King James I. We find a poem in Hamlet, where the prince invites his love and bandies matters of cosmology which were burning issues (literally) throughout Shakespeare's lifetime. While Julius Caesar's old Julian calendar prevailed in England its rival, the scientifically correct Gregorian reformed calendar, dominated most of Europe. Shakespeare suffused his plays with references to calendrical anomalies, as seen in Othello. By relating Shakespeare's texts, the Renaissance calendars and the liturgy, the book produces a lexicon apt for parsing the time-riddles in Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare handled religious subjects, examined and interrogated the dogmas of the received religions, and parodied the Crucifixion by exploiting Holinshed's account of the persecution and assassination of York.
Conflict over the Immaculate Conception was one part of the debate about theology among Victorian Christians; it was also an aspect of the conversation about the nature of woman. Roman Catholics, who were required to believe in the Immaculate Conception, defined a woman who was unchanging in her sinlessness, while Protestants asserted that sinfulness was integral to each human being. This key moment in Victorian religious history, which has been largely overlooked, shows how English Christians reacted to a religious dogma with no direct scriptural evidence. This controversial topic was the one most likely to encourage broad participation from non-Anglican Protestants. Roman Catholics had a generally positive response, especially after some initial hesitation, but Protestants resoundingly rejected it. Advanced Anglicans were ambivalent: many believed the Virgin Mary to be without sin but were hesitant to declare dogmatic a belief with no scriptural basis. This debate also helps illuminate attitudes of Victorian Christians about the relationship between sexual intercourse, the body, and sin.
about kosher than their Danish counterparts. This is most likely due to the fact that kosher markets are large and expanding in the UK, with many Jewish groups 171 172 Re l igi on , r e g ul at i on , c onsumpt ion living in increasingly bounded neighbourhoods, where Jewish identity is to a large extent maintained and developed through increasingly strict forms of kosher supervision and consumption. In Denmark the relatively small Jewish community is more dispersed, and here more of our informants saw kosher as religious dogma. There are many similarities between
the principal motivation that has informed my writing of these studies on Irigaray. The questions that intrigue me as a philosopher of religion concern Irigaray’s challenge to traditional religious dogmas and practices. I have selected facets of Irigaray’s oeuvre that have not been treated in great detail elsewhere. It is the theme of love, specifically a love that is divine, that resonates in Irigaray’s ethical and spiritual work. This focus takes it beyond the principally psychoanalytic and secular interests that have been the centre of most of the past attention
ideas that demonstrated the inferiority of non-white people in an arena free from religious dogma.50 Hunt’s racial ideas were strongly influenced by Robert Knox, a promising Edinburgh anatomy lecturer who was disgraced by unknowingly accepting bodies of murder victims for his anatomy classes. Knox initially enjoyed 37 Race in a Godless World a thriving career, but after the scandal – though officially exonerated of any wrongdoing – he became unemployable.51 This gave him free rein to publish his controversial racial views since he no longer had to worry about
engage in serious religious contemplation, his speculation upon the need for deduction in religious analysis is influenced by Bell’s observational method. Holmes states, ‘[t]here is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion […] It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner’ ( ibid. : 686). This was a key note of Doyle’s early religious questioning, stressing the importance of an un-blinkered study and reflection upon religious dogma. Uncharacteristically, Holmes continues: Our highest assurance of the goodness of
whom we thought to keep calling what they called themselves: “Islamists.” Whether these were moderate or radical—and whether they rose through elections or as armed guerrilla groups. Roy, meanwhile, unshakably repeated his thesis that they belonged to the past—terminologically at least. To Roy, the rising battalions of “beardies” were an avatar of the latest in the crowded field of “post-” concepts: “post-Islamism.” They had, he felt, abandoned the hope of applying a literalist reading of their religious dogma in the political field. I in
cultural and religious differences with larger India. Still, this is not about facts, culture, or religion. It is politics. According to Savarkar: Hindutva is not identical with what is vaguely indicated by the term Hinduism. By any ‘ism’ it is generally meant a theory or a code more or less based on spiritual or religious dogma or system. But when we attempt to investigate the essential significance of Hindutva we do not primarily – and certainly not mainly – concern ourselves with any particular
relationship with Hani and is forced to leave Leyla. However, Leyla’s eyes have been opened by her affair with Tala to the inexorability of her same-sex desire and she sees no way back to Ali or to pretending to be heterosexual. She decides to ‘come out’ to her family, and will eventually persuade Tala to do the same, as an immoveable condition of their relationship. Familial responses to their homosexuality constitute a typical assemblage of mainstream religious dogma and internalised Western homophobia. Leyla stuns her mother, Maya, by proclaiming
which religious dogma dominated the common law relating to medicine has been exaggerated. Does medico-legal history matter in practice? Even if the relationship of law and healing enjoys a long and diverse history, does it matter? Former Secretary of State for Education, Charles Clarke, said of any study of medieval history, ‘I don’t mind there being some medievalists about for ornamental purposes, but