Shakespeare 2013 - 2013 volume of Shakespeare Jahrbuch

The 2013 volume of Shakespeare Jahrbuch will be a special issue devoted to “Doubt and Faith”.
Shakespeare’s theatre is founded in doubt and it is for this reason that it can negotiate questions of faith in a particularly ambiguous way. Irrespective of what religious beliefs or rituals are put on stage, they are always conditional and subject to the rules of playacting. Early modern theatre never presupposes absolute certainty but always creates new realities, which are authorized and questioned at the same time. There is thus a complex tension in the ways in which early modern plays address ‘the last things’, i.e. questions concerning the afterlife, God and religion. Our doubts as to whether we are awake or dreaming create the exigency of finding certainty. These doubts moreover inform the idea of the great theatrum mundi, which is (possibly) managed by a divine director or spectator. In a time of thorough change, of religious upheavals and realignments, Shakespeare’s plays are thus subject to cultural tensions that only intensify these concerns. When even a savage like Caliban swears to his God, this begs the questions whose gods are invited by the theatre or whether the early modern stage is increasingly emptied of the divine.
The editorial board invites essays on the following questions:
? Knowledge, doubt and faith in Shakespeare’s plays
? Theatre and ritual: performances of faith in the early modern age
? Theatre and theatrum mundi in the early modern age
? God and director on the early modern stage
? Religious contacts and conflicts on the early modern stage
? The faith of the ‘other’ in Shakespearean drama
? Religious conflicts in contemporary Shakespeare productions and adaptations
? …
Shakespeare Jahrbuch, the Yearbook of the German Shakespeare Society, is a peer-reviewed journal. It offers contributions in German and English, scholarly articles, an extensive section of book reviews, and reports on Shakespeare productions in the German-speaking world. It also documents the activities of the Shakespeare Society.
Papers to be published in the Shakespeare Jahrbuch should be formatted according to our style sheet.
Please send your manuscripts (of about 6,000 words) to the editor by 31 March 2012.
Please send your manuscripts to:
Prof. Dr. Sabine Schülting (jahrbuch-AT-shakespeare-gesellschaft.de)
Freie Universität Berlin
Institut für Englische Philologie
Habelschwerdter Allee 45
D-14195 Berlin
Phone: +49-30-838 72346