Radical Religion from Shakespeare to Milton: Figures of Nonconformity in Early Modern England

ISBN-13: 9780521641043 / Angielski / Twarda / 2000 / 288 str.

Kristen Poole

Opis

The image of the puritan as a dour and repressive character has been central to ways of reading sixteenth- and seventeenth-century history and literature. Kristen Poole's original study challenges this perception arguing that radical reformers were most often portrayed in literature of the period as deviant, licentious and transgressive. Through extensive analysis of early modern pamphlets, sermons, poetry and plays, the fictional puritan emerges as a grotesque and carnivalesque figure. By recovering this lost satirical image, Poole sheds new light on the social role played by anti-puritan rhetoric.

Recenzje

"Poole masterfully uncovers and links together a group of lively and diverse materials that treat puritans as grotesque and aberant.... Radical Religion fills a significant and long-standing gap in the history of represntation, as previous booklength treatments of satiric images of puritans date back to the 1940s....Kristen Poole makes a major contribution to discussions of religion, literature, and culture in the early modern period. This groundbreaking book should be of considerable value and interest to literary scholars and historians alike." Journal of English and Germanic Philology

Spis treści

Acknowledgements; Introduction: deforming Reformation; 1. The Puritan in the alehouse: Falstaff and the drama of Martin Marprelate; 2. Eating disorder: feasting, fasting, and the Puritan bellygod at Bartholemew Fair; 3. Lewd conversations: the perversions of the Family of Love; 4. Dissecting sectarianism: swarms, form, and Thomas Edwards's Gangrœna; 5. The descent of dissent: monstrous genealogies and Milton's antiprelatical tracts; 6. Not so much as fig leaves: Adamites, naked Quakers, linguistic perfections and Paradise Lost; Epilogue: the fortunes of Hudibras; Notes; Selected bibliography; Index.