Religion, Literature, and Politics in Post-Reformation England, 1540–1688

by Edited by Donna B. Hamilton , Richard Strier

• ISBN13: 9780521474566
• ISBN10: 0521474566
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-03-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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.

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.