'This is an exceptionally sensitive and creative reading of Shakespeare's drama as an articulation of how grace and gratitude work in our language. Full of fresh insight and wide-ranging learning, written with clarity and energy, it will send us back to the plays with new eyes.'
Rowan Williams, Poet, Theologian and 104th Archbishop of Canterbury
This book illuminates Shakespeares work, and likewise illuminates the writing of the great if sometimes under-valued theologian, Nicholas Cusanus (1401-1464). The especial virtue of the volume is to demonstrate how theological conceptions of language derived from Cusanus may shed light on some of the essential characteristics of Shakespearian language. Following Gerlier, one is led to see that our God given capacity for language is fundamentally meant to identify the value of others in the divine order, and to enter into relationship, above all, through expressions of praise. Shakespeare is at one and the same time devoted to this understanding and aware of how easily it may be corrupted and with what tragic consequences.
There is no strained suggestion here that Shakespeare had been directly influenced by Cusanus. But there is skill, even virtuosity, in the way that Gerlier elicits the concept of praise from Cusanuss writing and then, through a very detailed analysis of two plays King Lear and The Winters Tale convincingly turns an interpretive key in the language and action of Shakespeares drama... All of this is accomplished in exceptionally lucid and elegant prose.
Robin Kirkpatrick, Professor of Italian and English Literature, Robinson College, University of Cambridge
Valentin Gerlier has restored to vigour a Christian Humanist reading of Shakespeare in a more precisely theological key. He convincingly argues, through dazzlingly close readings, that King Lear and the late plays concern a Renaissance crisis of language: it is a human poetic construct; and yet if it is regarded as only an instrument of power and deceit, then its sacramental core as sign and gift of mediated transcendence is denied. Human trust and association become in consequence impossible, and nature herself is corrupted. Such tragic delusion means that we can only wait in hope for the divine miraculously to break through our discourse and actions if life is to be restored. Nothing could show better the new relevance of Shakespeare for our current human crisis.
Catherine Pickstock, Norris-Hulse Professor in Divinity, University of Cambridge
