In Hamlet in Purgatory, renowned literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt delves into his longtime fascination with the ghost of Hamlet's father, and his daring and ultimately gratifying journey takes him through surprising intellectual territory. It yields an extraordinary account of the rise and fall of Purgatory as both a belief and a lucrative institution--as well as a capacious new reading of the power of Hamlet.
Back in Rome after their dramatic adventures in Venice, Costa, Peroni and Leo Falcone are rebuilding their lives. But they team up once again when faced with the sudden appearance of fresh bloodstains on a missing young boy's T-shirt in a small museum exhibit displaying supposed evidence of communication from souls in Purgatory. Soon they find themselves embroiled in a mystery involving both the ancient cult of Mithras and a sinister ossuary, the House of Bones.
The Birth of Purgatory is concerned not with theological discussion but with the growth of an idea, with the relation between belief and society, with mental structures, and with the historical role of the imagination. Le Goff argues that the doctrine of Purgatory did not appear in the Latin theology of the West before the 12th century. He shows that the growth of a belief in an intermediate place between Heaven and Hell was closely bound up with profound changes in the social and intellectual reality of the Middle Ages.
