'Paul Zajac assembles here a remarkable archive of contentment for the early modern period. His wealth of primary sources, his elegant negotiation of spiritual and political discourses of the self, and his bold analyses of a startling range of dramatic and poetic genres make Emotion and the Self in English Renaissance Literature essential reading in the scholarship on literature, religion, and the history of emotions.' Heather Hirschfeld, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Introduction; 1. Constructing contentment in Reformation England; 2. Romancing contentment: sex, suffering, and the passions in Sidney's Arcadias; 3. Fashioning contentment: ethics, emotion, and literary mode in Spenser's poetry; 4. Performing contentment: communal affect and passionate disconnect in Shakespeare's As You Like It and Othello; 5. Losing contentment: Affect, environment, and empire in Milton's Paradise Lost; Conclusion: regaining contentment?