- Description
- 1 online resource (xv, 322 pages, 8 pages of unnumbered plates) : illustrations.
- Summary
- This book delves into the author's longtime fascination with the ghost of Hamlet's father, and his daring and ultimately gratifying journey takes him through surprising intellectual territory. It yields an extraordinary account of the rise and fall of Purgatory as both a belief and a lucrative institution as well as a capacious new reading of the power of Hamlet. In the mid-sixteenth century, English authorities abruptly changed the relationship between the living and dead. Declaring that Purgatory was a false poem, they abolished the institutions and banned the practices that Christians relied on to ease the passage to Heaven for themselves and their dead loved ones. Greenblatt explores the fantastic adventure narratives, ghost stories, pilgrimages, and imagery by which a belief in a grisly prison house of souls had been shaped and reinforced in the Middle Ages. He probes the psychological benefits as well as the high costs of this belief and of its demolition.
- Series Statement
- Princeton classics
- Uniform Title
- Hamlet in purgatory (Online)
- Princeton classics.
- Alternative Title
- Hamlet in purgatory (Online)
- Subject
- Note
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-314) and index.
- Access (note)
- Access restricted to authorized users.
- LCCN
- 2013937134
- OCLC
- ssj0001054412
- Author
Greenblatt, Stephen, 1943-
- Title
Hamlet in purgatory [electronic resource] / Stephen Greenblatt ; with a new preface by the author.
- Imprint
Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2013.
- Edition
First Princeton classics edition.
- Series
Princeton classics
Princeton classics.
- Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-314) and index.
- Access
Access restricted to authorized users.
- Connect to: