Scholars@Duke
Sarah Beckwith

Sarah Beckwith

Katherine Everett Gilbert Distinguished Professor of English
English
ott@duke.edu
Duke Box 90014, Durham, NC 27708-0680
302A Allen, Box 90014, Durham, NC 27708
Office hours

Selected Publications

Absent Presences: The Theatre of Resurrection in York

Chapter · January 1, 2023 The dead come to life in the bodies of the living – not just in resurrection but also in theatre. Corpus Christi theatre fully understands the complexity of this interrelationship in the palpable apparitions of Christ-the-actor to audiences in the Resurrec ... Full text Cite

The Three Theological Virtues

Chapter · January 1, 2023 In the Christian tradition, faith, hope, and charity have God as their object and instigator, and they are the means by which we share in his nature. Hence they are called theological or deiform virtues. But during the Reformation Luther emphatically isola ... Full text Cite

Enter the Child: A Scene from Stanley Cavell's the Claim of Reason

Journal Article Philosophy and Literature · October 1, 2022 Taking its cue from a resonant passage in Stanley Cavell’s The Claim of Reason, this essay reflects on the necessity of the figure of the child for Cavell’s philosophy and for his understanding of the differences between Austinian and Wittgensteinian crite ... Full text Cite

Imagining the Virtues: Medieval and Early Modern Histories

Journal Article Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies · September 1, 2022 Full text Cite

Tragic Implication

Chapter · March 10, 2022 "Tragic Implication" looks at the links between the first and last essays in Must We Mean What We Say? Cavell's concept of acknowledgment as it emerges in the last two essays in this collection has received a fair amount of attention. This essay, by contra ... Full text Cite

A Vision of Language for Literary Historians: Forms of Life, Context, Use

Chapter · January 1, 2022 Wittgenstein did not address the question of history directly or extensively. But his vision of language is pervasively historical and has implications for the way we do literary history. This chapter examines the idea of use at the heart of Wittgenstein’s ... Full text Cite

The fortunes of tragedy

Conference Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies · January 1, 2019 Full text Cite

Conversions: Medieval and Early Modern

Journal Article Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies · September 1, 2018 Full text Cite

Reading for our lives

Journal Article Pmla · March 1, 2017 Full text Cite

Hamlet’s ethics

Chapter · January 1, 2017 “Hamlet’s Ethics” argues that the critical question of delay in Hamlet has blinded readers to the play’s exploration of questions of agency and vision. The so-called indecision of Hamlet at the point of action is framed in the play, but in such a way as to ... Full text Cite

Sources: Volver, or Coming Back

Chapter · January 1, 2016 Cite

Introduction

Chapter · March 1, 2015 Full text Cite

Introduction

Journal Article New Literary History · March 2015 Full text Cite

Language goes on holiday: English allegorical drama and the virtue tradition

Journal Article Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies · December 1, 2012 This article explores the virtue tradition in the English theatrical tradition of morality theater and its fortunes on the professional stage. It explores questions of recognition in allegorical drama by examining "mankind" and "mercy" in the morality play ... Full text Cite

The Eucharist

Chapter · 2011 Cite

Premodern Shakespeare

Book · December 1, 2010 The deepest periodic division in English literary history is between the "medieval" and the "early modern," not least because the cultural investments in maintaining that division are exceptionally powerful. Narratives of national and religious identity an ... Full text Open Access Cite

The Eucharist

Chapter · 2010 Cite

Shakespeare’s Resurrections

Chapter · October 2009 Cite

Middle English Drama

Chapter · June 2009 Cite

Drama

Chapter · January 1, 2009 “Middle English Drama” is the conventional, if misleading, category referring to the textual remnants of a vast, expansive, very imaginative performative culture which was largely non-textual. Drama bespeaks authors who write it, theaters in which it might ... Full text Cite

Discerning the Body

Chapter · 2008 Cite

Reform and Cultural Revolution

Journal Article JMEMS · 2005 A special issue on James Simpson's new Oxford History. Commissioned essays by David Wallace, Derek Pearsall, Tom Bettridge, Rick Emmerson and Bruce Holsinger. David and I wrote a 12 page introduction for it. ... Cite

Reform and cultural revolution: Introduction

Journal Article Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies · January 1, 2005 Full text Cite

Stephen Greenblatt's Hamlet and the forms of oblivion

Journal Article Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies · January 29, 2003 (Exploring the hermeneutics of the new historicism in early modern English literature) ... Full text Cite

Introduction

Journal Article Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies · September 1, 2001 Full text Cite

Sacrifice

Book · 2001 Cite

Sacrifice: Medieval and Early Modern

Journal Article JMEMS · 2001 Featured Publication Cite

Absent Presences: Resurrection Theatre in York

Chapter · 2000 Featured Publication Cite

Catholicism and Catholicity: Eucharistic Communities in Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Journal Article Directions in Modern Theology · March 1999 Based on conference being held at Duke, April 17-19, under auspices of the Homeland Foundation ... Cite

Introduction

Journal Article Modern Theology · January 1, 1999 Full text Cite

Introduction - The cultural work of medieval theater: Ritual practice in England, 1350-1600

Journal Article JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN STUDIES · 1999 Cite

Body, Matter, Spirit

Journal Article JMEMS, special issue · 1998 Cite

English communities in transition, 1350-1600 - Introduction

Journal Article JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN STUDIES · 1998 Cite

The Present of Past Things: The York Corpus Christi Theatre as a Contemporary Theater of Memory

Journal Article Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies · 1996 Cite

Problems of authority in late medieval english mysticism: Language, agency, and authority in the book of margery kempe

Journal Article Exemplaria · January 1, 1992 Language acquires life and historically evolves precisely here, in concrete verbal communication, and not in the abstract linguistic system of language forms, nor in the individual psyche of speakers. © 1992 Maney Publishing. ... Full text Cite

Women sing the Blues

Journal Article Review of Wilfrid Mellers’ Angels of the Night, Women’s Review · January 1987 Cite

Kingsley and the Women

Journal Article Review of Kingsley Amis’s ’The Old Devils,’ New Socialist · January 1987 Cite

Steven Berkoff’s Theatre of the Grotesque

Journal Article Review of Sink the Belgrano, New Socialist · October 1986 Cite

Schlock up your Daughters

Journal Article Review of recent ’exploitation’ cinema, New Socialist · July 1986 Cite

Women beware Barker

Journal Article Review of Howard Barker’s Women Beware Women, New Socialist · June 1986 Cite

Communities in Transition

Journal Article JMEMS, special issue Cite