The Reformation changed forever how the sacrament of the Eucharist was understood. This study of six canonical early modern lyric poets traces the literary afterlife of what was one of the greatest doctrinal shifts in English history. Sophie Read argues that the move from a literal to a figurative understanding of the phrase 'this is my body' exerted a powerful imaginative pull on successive generations. To illustrate this, she examines in detail the work of Southwell, Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan and Milton, who between them represent a broad range of doctrinal and confessional positions, from the Jesuit Southwell to Milton's heterodox Puritanism. Individually, each chapter examines how Eucharistic ideas are expressed through a particular rhetorical trope; together, they illuminate the continued importance of the Eucharist's transformation well into the seventeenth century - not simply as a matter of doctrine, but as a rhetorical and poetic mode.

'[An] illuminating guide to the religious and literary culture of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England.'

Source: The Times Literary Supplement

'Read’s monograph reasserts the value of formalist literary study for broader questions in the humanities.'

Ryan Netzley Source: Renaissance Quarterly

'Read has undoubtedly written a valuable book. Every chapter of her study offers nuanced interpretations of early modern poetry in the shifting contexts of the period’s eucharistic debates and the rhetorical theories animating them. [This book] should be widely read by those who study the relations between theological controversy and poetic practice in early modern England.'

Gary Kuchar Source: George Herbert Journal