McAdam Publishes "Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Religious Toleration" with 免费福利资源在线看片 of Toronto Press
免费福利资源在线看片 of Lethbridge English professor Ian McAdam has published a new book with 免费福利资源在线看片 of Toronto Press: Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Religious Toleration (2025).
McAdam鈥檚 book argues that the plays of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare contain more theological nuance鈥攁nd more openness to religious difference鈥攖han they have usually been credited with.
The study builds on the author鈥檚 long-standing interest in the interplay of literature, identity, and belief. His earlier works, The Irony of Identity: Self and Imagination in the Drama of Christopher Marlowe (1999) and Magic and Masculinity in Early Modern English Drama (2009), explored the imaginative strategies and cultural pressures shaping early modern theatre. This third book shifts the focus to the possibilities of toleration in a period marked by sectarian division and censorship.
At the centre of the book is a reappraisal of Marlowe. Traditionally treated as a provocateur and heretic, Marlowe emerges here as a playwright whose works exhibit what McAdam describes as 鈥渘uanced religiosity.鈥 His controversial depictions of belief and unbelief are framed as imaginative tests of Protestant doctrines鈥攑articularly the question of divine grace鈥攖hat preoccupied writers and theologians of the late sixteenth century. Shakespeare, in turn, is shown to engage closely with these same currents, often transforming Marlowe鈥檚 radical theological explorations into subtler but still probing dramatic forms.
By reading these playwrights side by side, McAdam uncovers a deeper intertextual dialogue that extends beyond style or theatrical technique. The book suggests that Marlowe and Shakespeare together illuminate how drama could register, and even foster, early stirrings of religious tolerance in a climate of surveillance and persecution.
McAdam has taught at the 免费福利资源在线看片 of Lethbridge since 1995, focusing primarily on Renaissance and seventeenth-century studies. His scholarly contributions have been recognized nationally and internationally, with major funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), as well as awards for teaching and research. His first book was honoured by the Marlowe Society of America, and his second has been widely reviewed in leading journals. Beyond his own publications, he has served as Vice-President of the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies, edited for Marlowe Studies: An Annual, and acted as referee and assessor for numerous scholarly bodies.
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