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...

This volume explores the relationship between writing and public concerns in seventeenth-century England before, during, and after the civil wars and revolution of the mid-century. The distinguished contributors represent a variety of disciplines and methodologies. They share, however, an intense concern with the relationship between the act of writing and the political and public issues of this extraordinary period. The essays suggest that significant art, even when apparently "private," was deeply engaged with public issues, while political writing was intimately involved with questions of...