The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.0563 Friday, 25 March 2005
From: John D. Cox <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 24 Mar 2005 14:44:50 -0500
Subject: Shakespeare's Personal Faith
Jack Heller's examples of Bunyan and Flannery O'Connor are helpful, but
they reinforce the point I made earlier about extra-literary evidence
regarding a writer's ideological commitments. Knowing what Bunyan and
O'Connor believed does not have to be inferred from their literary
works; we know a lot about them otherwise (including letters in
O'Connor's case and *Grace Abounding* in Bunyan's), and we bring that
knowledge to their fiction. In Shakespeare's case, we have nothing but
the plays and poems-nothing, that is, about his personal beliefs. Don
Bloom's point about O'Connor as a "mad Baptist" makes the point. Without
her letters etc., his conclusion would seem to be as convincing (maybe
more convincing) as an argument that she was a devout Catholic.
John Cox
Hope College
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