The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism, edited by Joanne Parker and Corinna Wagner

Abstract

uses an example from Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies (2008) to illustrate the ways in which Shakespearean fragments are still understood to “possess a meaning beyond their meaning,” in this case as ammunition for anticolonial rebellion (157). But elsewhere the relative neglect of colonial contexts was felt—the Victorian period, after all, saw Shakespeare exported alongside missionary efforts to promote Biblical study around the empire. Despite this omission, this is an ambitious and engagingly written study which will immediately become indispensable for students of Victorian Shakespeare, and whose argument extends well beyond this subject matter, prompting the reader to reconsider the place of religion in English studies more broadly. Sally Barnden King’s College, London