David Anonby

Dissertation Title: Shakespeare and Soteriology: Crossing the Reformation Divide

Supervisor: Dr. Gary Kuchar

Second Reader: Dr. Erin Kelly

My SSHRC funded research explores the meaning of Reformation controversies about theories of salvation as they are negotiated in Shakespearean drama. While twentieth-century literary criticism tended to regard Shakespeare as a harbinger of secularism, the so-called “turn to religion” in early modern studies has given renewed attention to the religious elements in Shakespeare and his contemporaries. By critically examining Shakespeare’s handling of discourses of soteriology (salvation) in a number of key plays, I am making a unique and important contribution to the burgeoning field of Shakespeare and religion studies. I have written dissertation chapters on justification in The Merchant of Venice, religious violence in Hamlet, atonement in Measure for Measure, and exorcism in King Lear. It has been my longstanding dream to return to grad school to study early modern literature and theology, and my experience of working under Dr. Kuchar and Dr. Kelly has exceeded my highest expectations.

Recent Scholarly Activity:

Publications:

Anonby, David. “The Sacred Pain of Penitence: The Theology of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets.”

Suffering, the Sacred, and the Sublime: Trauma and Transcendence in Literature, edited by Holly Faith Nelson, Lynn Szabo, and Jens Zimmermann, Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2010, pp. 87-95. (Mentioned by Gregory Kneidel in The Year’s Work in English Studies, 91.1 (2012), p. 568.)

Anonby, David. “‘This Tempest in My Mind’: Demonology, Madness, and Recusancy in King Lear.” Love, Knowledge and the University: Essays and Poetry from the Christianity and Literature Study Group, Victoria, 2013, edited by John North, Waterloo: North Waterloo Academic Press, 2014, pp. 71-90. 

Conference Presentations:

October 21, 2017: “‘The rack of this tough world’: Shakespeare’s Ecumenical Response to Southwell’s Martyrdom in King Lear.” Pacific Northwest Renaissance Society, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon.

June 3, 2013: “‘This Tempest in My Mind’: Demonology, Madness, and Recusancy in King Lear.” Christianity and Literature Study Group (Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English), University of Victoria, Victoria, BC.

June 2, 2008: “Sin, Sex, Suffering, and Salvation in John Donne’s Holy Sonnets.” Christianity and Literature Study Group (Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English), University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC.