| Summary: | Thriving public theaters set England and Spain apart from the rest of early modern Europe and inflected their dramatizations of forgiveness with a sense of social interdependence. The struggle that frequently accompanies our lived experience of forgiveness is not as transparent in Shakespeare's plays as in Spanish Golden Age dramas, where the honor code gives rise to a social sense of self that frequently conflicts with the inclinations of the individual's heart. As characters in works by Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Claramonte, and Calderon grapple with personal and social obligations that stand in the way of reconciliation, they illuminate obstacles that likewise complicate forgiveness in Othello, King Lear, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. To surmount these obstacles, forgivers in Shakespeare's plays and the Spanish comedias enlist trusted allies to facilitate communication, find compassion, or reimagine justice. By illustrating that forgiveness, like honor, does not arise independently within an individual, but comes into being through interactions with others, my dissertation posits forgiveness as an alternative form of heroism in the comedias. In turn, Shakespeare's insistence on the difficulty of forgiveness in his later plays challenges notions of forgiveness as a straightforward religious and social good. Instead, forgiveness emerges from a nexus of risk, loss, and longing to become more provocative as we recognize the courage and creativity it entails.
My dissertation locates the boundaries of forgiveness in a network that exceeds the damaged bond between forgiver and forgiven one. Critics like Sarah Beckwith follow Hannah Arendt in asserting reciprocal recognition as a basis for forgiveness. Yet in a number of Shakespeare's plays, particularly tragedies, characters are forgiven without even acknowledging their wrongdoing. While Catholic and Reformation theology set forth guidelines for how one receives forgiveness from God, they offer little direction about how to forgive another person. Present-day philosophers like Charles Griswold postulate prerequisites for forgiveness in secular settings. By integrating religious and philosophical frameworks, I advance critical discussions of forgiveness beyond an attitude of appreciation to analysis of the social structures, attitudes and actions that make it possible to forgo vengeance, forget faults, and preserve dignity after injury.
|
|---|
