Roberta Kwan is an Honorary Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Media, Communication, Creative Arts, Language, and Literature at Macquarie University, Sydney and an Honorary Associate in the Medieval and Early Modern Centre at The University of Sydney. Her research explores the intersections of early modern drama, theology and philosophy. She has published several scholarly articles in this field.
"Roberta Kwan's considered, deeply informed and lively book shows the act of interpretation, and the condition of hermeneutical uncertainty, to be central to works of drama emerging in an age passionately divided over the question ""how can we know?"" A fine contribution to literary criticism and to studies of religion.--Peter Holbrook, Australian Catholic University This book is a superb contribution to a particularly complex field historically and philosophically. The scholarship is erudite, rigorous, lucid, and adeptly connects the complexities of Shakespeare's historical dramatic art to issues of contemporary relevance.--Liam Semler, University of Sydney Shakespeare, the Reformation and the Interpreting Self is a powerfully argued and meticulously demonstrated account of the ways in which the Protestant Reformation redefined the prevailing notions of the self. This work is adept in its detailed referencing of a ""hermeneutic revolution"", the sweeping religious, social and intellectual changes ushered in by the Reformation and its theological thinkers. The human individual as interpreting self is given rigorous theological focus through the ideas of Calvin, and Luther, among others; socially, in the changing forces of British religious and cultural life and institutions; and in Shakespeare's writings, where Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, and All's Well that Ends Well are analysed for their complex understandings of characters as interpreting selves.-- ""AUHE Prize for Literary Scholarship 2023"""