Shakespeare And Christian Culture

If literature were a tree, its homologous traditional culture is the water, soil andsome other nutrition around its root. Therefore, the development of literature is boundto assimilate all the salutary cultural nutrition from the traditional culture. Without thetraditional cultural headspring, it would be impossible for the tree of literature to growhealthily and prosperously, especially for the trees like Shakespeare's works which arefull of miraculous vitality. In other words, without the Christian culture which plays adominant role in traditional culture, Shakespeare's works would be a castle in the air.In order to understand Shakespeare's works more objectively and authentically, it isnecessary for us to study Shakespeare and his works from the perspective of Christianculture, which is particularly significant for the development of Shakespeare study inChina in the historical context that Christian culture was once thought to be aforbidden zone in Shakespeare study.From the perspective of Christian culture and thought, this paper studies theclose relationship between Shakespeare & his works and Christian culture in thefollowing three aspects. Firstly, the research on the religious atmosphere ofShakespeare's family and his last words proves that Shakespeare has the tendency ofChristian belief. Secondly, by probing into the Christian thought in Shakespeare'sworks and its an exploration of artistic effect, this study reveals Shakespeare's innerChristian emotion. Thirdly, an exploration of wonderful use of a large number ofbiblical archetypes and allusions in Shakespeare's works further attests to the closerelationship between Shakespeare and Christian culture.The orginality of the study can be summarized as the following three points.Firstly, on the basis of a large collection of the latest data, this paper makes asystematic study of the close relationship between Shakespeare & his works andChristian culture; also, from the angle of Christian culture, this paper makes originalargumentations. Secondly, this paper interprets and deals with the Christian tendencyimplicit in Shakespeare's epitaph and last words. Thirdly, given the unique historicaland cultural background, the unique period of cultural fusion characterized by humanism reflected in the Renaissance and the religious concepts advocated by thereligious reform, this paper, while affirming the widely-acknowledged humanism ofShakespeare, delves further into his Christian thought; in addition, this paper intendsto make a thorough inquiry into the inherent parallel relations between Shakespeare'shumanism and his Christian thought, which are reflected in the relevant text.This paper is composed mainly of seven chapters. Chapter One is a briefintroduction to the motivations, purposes, significance, originalties and oganization ofthe paper. Chapter Two is a general survey on relevant domestic and foreignliteratures and the corresponding summation. Chapter Three mainly focuses onstudying the close relationship between Shakespeare & his family and Christianculture. Chapter Four chiefly demonstrates the Christian thought penetratingShakespeare's works, namely repentance, original sin, universal fraternity,benevolence and other religious consciousness. Chapter Five mainly discusses theingenious skills Shakespeare utilizes by borrowing from the biblical archetypes, suchas character, plot, image,etc, and their excellent artistic effect in his works. ChapterSix attempts to make a parallel comparison between Shakespeare's works and the textof the Bible to further prove the inherent connections existing between the two.Chapter Seven is the conclusion of this study.