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Author:
Mary Jo Kietzman
Mary Jo Kietzman
Associate Professor, University of Michigan-Flint, USA mkietzma@umich.edu
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Abstract
Shakespeare's King Lear offers later writers a scaffolding on which to construct do-it-yourself religions that emerge when intentional and unintentional pilgrims venture, abdicate, or are expelled from existing institutional orders and discover the covenantal core of religion when they encounter Other dispossessed people. Shakespeare's play, in dialogue with the Book of Job, develops the idea of a suffering God that is latent in the Hebrew Bible. When students at the University of Michigan-Flint adapted the play to their contemporary environment, they began their own pilgrimages into a wounded city and family traumas. Without biblical literacy, they instinctively reached for John Keats’ Lear-inspired ‘Vale of Suffering’ letter and the Bible-belt inflected stories of Flannery O'Connor to reassemble Lear as a religious play for today.
Contributor Notes
Mary Jo Kietzman is Associate Professor of English at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA. She is the author of The Self-Fashioning of an Early-Modern Englishwoman, Mary Carleton's Many Lives (2004) and The Biblical Covenant in Shakespeare (2018). She has published numerous articles on a wide range of English Renaissance authors and subjects as well as several articles on student adaptations of Shakespeare as well as a guide for teachers who want to incorporate urban pilgrimage into their teaching. Email: mkietzma@umich.edu.