Studies in Literature and Language
The Will Not in Bondage: An Interpretation of Free Will in Shakespeare’s Pure Tragedies
Abstract
The tension between Christian Predestination and Free Will is the theme Shakespearean tragedy frequently deals with. As it is the tragedy that often masterly generalizes the playwright’s ultimate concerns, the paper, based on a re-examination of the fates of the heroes and themes revealed in Shakespeare’s pure tragedies from the perspectives of Free Will as the gift of grace and that in man’s exertion and judgments, suggests that Shakespeare, though living and writing under Anglican circumstances, shows in great measure an anti-Calvinistic view of Free Will, to be elaborated clearly, that man’s will can be reconciled with God’s will, that the path toward eternity and redemption is neither simple nor clear, and that man is not saved by good works, but by grace through faith that works well. However, his lack of strong confidence in the infinite has constantly aroused controversies on the adherence of his Christian faith.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Augustine. (2010). On the free choice of the will, on grace and free choice, and other writings. In P. King (Ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bradley, A. C. (1937). Shakespearean tragedy. London: Macmillan and Co.
Buckley, T. A. (1851). Canons and decrees of the council of trent. London: George Rutledge and Co.
Greenblatt, S. (2004). Will in the world. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company.
Hacht, A. M. (2007). Shakespeare for students: Critical interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays and poetry (2nd ed., Vol.1). Farmington Hills: Thompson Gale.
Liu, X. L. (2011). Twelve lectures on the history of christianity. Beijing: People’s Publishing House.
Martin, L. (2005). The collected works of Martin Luther (Vol.1). The Editorial Board of Chinese Version of The Collected Works of Martin Luther. Shanghai: SDX Joint Publishing Company.
New International Version of The Holy Bible (1984). East Brunswick, New Jersey: International Bible Society.
Schoenbaum, S. (1987). William Shakespeare: A compact documentary life. New York: Oxford University Press.
Shakespeare, W. (1997). The Norton Shakespeare. In S. Greenblatt (Ed.). New York: W. W. Norton.
Wang, J. F. (1995). Predestination and the cultural tradition of the west. Journal of Historiography, 6, 78-81.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/8127
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2016 Studies in Literature and Language
Share us to: 
Online Submission: http://cscanada.org/index.php/sll/submission/wizard
Reminder
How to do online submission to another Journal?
If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:
1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author
Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.
2. Submission
Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.
We only use three mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: caooc@hotmail.com; sll@cscanada.net; sll@cscanada.org
Articles published in Studies in Literature and Language are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).
STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE Editorial Office
Address: 1055 Rue Lucien-L'Allier, Unit #772, Montreal, QC H3G 3C4, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org
E-mail: office@cscanada.net; office@cscanada.org; caooc@hotmail.com
Copyright © 2010 Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture 
