Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Reformation: Literary Negotiation of Religious Difference (Lexington Books, 2022), a major new work of literary criticism from Professor Emeritus of English Dennis Taylor, examines Shakespeare’s dramatization of key issues of the Elizabethan Reformation, including the conflict between the sacred, the critical, and the disenchanted, as well as the Catholic, the Protestant, and the secular. This detailed work of scholarship shows how Shakespeare was negotiating the key religious differences of his time, according to Taylor. Born and raised a Catholic, as most scholars now agree, Shakespeare coped with what he and others experienced as the trauma of the Protestant Reformation. According to Taylor, Shakespeare provides an important model for modern dialogue which negotiates religious differences without denying them. Taylor joined the English Department faculty in 1971, served as chair from 1982-1987, and retired in 2008. Read more on BC News.