Mortal Thoughts : Oxford University Press : 9780198831181 : 0198831188 : 11 Oct 2018 : Since the nineteenth century, it has been assumed that the concept of personal identity in the early modern period is bound up with secularization. Indeed, many explanations of the emergence of modernity have been based on this thesis, in which Shakespeare as a secular author has played a central role. However, the idea of secularization is now everywhere under threat. The secularity of modern society is less apparent than it was a generation ago. Shakespeare, too, has come to be seen in a religious perspective. What happens to human identity in this different framework? Mortal Thoughts asks what selfhood looks like if we do not assume that an idea of the self could only come into being as a result of an emptying out of a religious framework. It does so by examining human mortality. What it is to be human, and how a life is framed by its ending, are issues that cross religious confessions in early mo