Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons^™

Deliver Us From Evil: Essays On Symbolic Engagement In Early Drama, Clifford Davidson

Clifford Davidson

The focus of this book is on the reality of evil for medieval and Renaissance dramatists and their audiences. What propels the work beyond similar critiques is the author's insistence that evil is not an outmoded feature of past societies, but an active ingredient of contemporary life. Davidson fast forwards from distant times once described as "calamitous" to a century of far more violence and atrocity - our own twentieth and its overflow. While drawing on Kant to illuminate the kinds of evil portrayed in early drama through Marlowe and Shakespeare, Davidson refers to contemporary events that scream for an …