Religion, Literature, and Politics in Post-Reformation England, 1540–1688
This collection of essays by historians and literary scholars treats English history and culture from the Henrician Reformation to the Glorious Revolution as a single coherent period in which religion is a dominant element in political and cultural life. It seeks to explore the centrality of the religion-politics nexus for this whole period through examining a wide variety of literary and non-literary texts, from plays and poems to devotional treatises, political treatises and histories. It breaks down normal distinctions between Tudor and Stuart, pre- and post-Restoration periods to reveal a coherent (though not all serene and untroubled) post-Reformation culture struggling with major issues of belief, practice and authority.
- Restores religion to a central place in the politics and culture of post-Reformation England
- Brings new coherence to the period 1540–1688
- Offers interdisciplinary appeal: literary, cultural and historical scholars and subjects
Product details
April 2008Paperback
9780521060875
296 pages
229 × 152 × 17 mm
0.43kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction Donna B. Hamilton and Richard Strier
- 1. Sir John Oldcastle as symbol of Reformation historiography Annabel Patterson
- 2. The 'sacred hunger of ambitious minds': Spenser's savage religion Andrew Hadfield
- 3. Subversive fathers and suffering subjects: Shakespeare and Christianity Debora K. Shuger
- 4. Kneeling and the body politic Lori Anne Ferrell
- 5. Donne and the politics of devotion Richard Strier
- 6. Catholic, Anglican or Puritan? Edward Sackville, Fourth Earl of Dorset, and the ambiguities of religion in early Stuart England David L. Smith
- 7. Crucifixion or apocalypse: refiguring the Eikon Basilike Laura Blair McKnight
- 8. Marvell, sacrilege, and Protestant historiography: contextualising 'Upon Appleton House' Gary D. Hamilton
- 9. Entering The Temple: women, reading and devotion in seventeenth-century England Helen Wilcox
- 10. Contextualising Dryden's Absolom: William Lawrence, the laws of marriage and the case for King Monmouth Mark Goldie
- 11. Reformation in the Restoration crisis, 1679–1682 Gary S. De Krey
- 12. Shadwell's dramatic trimming, Steven Pincus.