These essays by leading historians and literary scholars investigate the role of religion in shaping political, social and literary forms, and their reciprocal role in shaping early modern religion, from the Reformation to the Civil Wars. Reflecting and rethinking the insights of new historicism and cultural studies, individual essays take up various aspects of the productive, if tense, relation between Tudor-Stuart Christianity and culture, and explore how religion informs some of the central texts of English Renaissance literature: the vernacular Bible, Foxe's Acts and Monuments, Hooker's Laws, Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, the poems of John Donne, Amelia Lanyer and John Milton. The collection demonstrates the centrality of religion to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, and its influence on early modern constructions of gender, subjectivity and nationhood.

Offering fuller understandings of both dramatic representations and the complexities of religious culture, this collection reveals the ways in which religion and performance were inextricably linked in early modern England. Its readings extend beyond the interpretation of straightforward religious allusions and suggest new avenues for theorizing the dynamic relationship between religious representations and dramatic ones. By addressing the particular ways in which commercial drama adapted the sensory aspects of religious experience to its own symbolic systems, the volume enacts a methodological shift towards a more nuanced semiotics of theatrical performance. Covering plays by a wide range of dramatists, including Shakespeare, individual essays explore the material conditions of performance, the intricate resonances between dramatic performance and religious ceremonies, and the multiple valences of religious references in early modern plays. Additionally, Religion and Drama in Early Modern England reveals the theater's broad interpretation of post-Reformation Christian practice, as well as its engagement with the religions of Islam, Judaism and paganism.

By examining orthodox methods of thought in the Renaissance, the author tries to reconstruct a picture of the dominant culture of the period in England between 1580 and 1630.

This long-standing series provides the guild of religion scholars a venue for publishing aimed primarily at colleagues. It includes scholarly monographs, revised dissertations, Festschriften, conference papers, and translations of ancient and medieval documents. Works cover the sub-disciplines of biblical studies, history of Christianity, history of religion, theology, and ethics. Festschriften for Karl Barth, Donald W. Dayton, James Luther Mays, Margaret R. Miles, and Walter Wink are among the seventy-five volumes that have been published. Contributors include: C. K. Barrett, Francois Bovon, Paul S. Chung, Marie-Helene Davies, Frederick Herzog, Ben F. Meyer, Pamela Ann Moeller, Rudolf Pesch, D. Z. Phillips, Rudolf Schnackenburgm Eduard Schweizer, John Vissers

Seventeen distinguished historians of early modern Britain pay tribute to an outstanding scholar and teacher, presenting reviews of major areas of debate.

This anthology offers a full introduction to Renaissance theatre in its historical and political context, along with newly edited and thoroughly annotated texts of the following plays: * The Spanish Tragedy (Thomas Kyd) * Arden of Faversham (Anon.) * Edward II (Christopher Marlowe) * A Woman Killed with Kindness (Thomas Heywood) * The Tragedy of Mariam (Elizabeth Cary) * The Masque of Blackness (Ben Jonson) * The Knight of the Burning Pestle (Francis Beaumont) * Epicoene, or the Silent Woman (Ben Jonson) * The Roaring Girl (Thomas Middleton & Thomas Dekker) * The Changeling (Thomas Middleton & William Rowley) * 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (John Ford). Each play is prefaced by an introductory headnote discussing the thematic focus of the play and its textual history, and is cross-referenced to other plays of the period that relate thematically and generically. An accompanying website contains a wide selection of contextual documents which supplement the anthology: www.routledge.com/textbooks/0415187346

The values and institutions of the Christian Church remained massively dominant in early modern English society and culture, but its theology, liturgy and unity were increasingly disputed. The period was overall one of institutional conformity and individual diversity: the centrality of Christian religion was universally acknowledged; yet the nature of religion and of religious observance in England changed dramatically during the Reformation, Renaissance, and Restoration. Further, because English culture was still biblical and English society was still religious, the state involved itself in ecclesiastical matters to an extraordinary extent. Successive political and ecclesiastical administrations were committed to helping each other, but their attempts to mould religious beliefs and customs were effectively attempts to modify English culture. Church and state were complementary, yet because they were ultimately distinct estates, they could work only, at best, uneasily in partnership with each other. Cultural output is thus an ideal lens for examining this period of tension in the church, state and society of England. The case studies contained in this volume examine the intersection of politics, religion and society over the entire early modern period, through distinct examples of cultural texts produced and cultural practices followed.

These essays, ranging widely across the cultural and geographical terrain of Renaissance Europe, have been specifically written by 12 established scholars from Italy, France, Britain, and North America, who review for general readers, and advance for those beginning research, the current understanding of traditional disciplines and practices and the emerging empirical and mathematical science. Distributed in the US and Canada by St. Martin's. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The primary aim of Knowing Faith is to uncover the intervention of literary texts and approaches in a wider conversation about religious knowledge: why we need it, how to get there, where to stop, and how to recognise it once it has been attained. Its relative freedom from specialised disciplinary investments allows a literary lens to bring into focus the relatively elusive strands of thinking about belief, knowledge and salvation, probing the particulars of affect implicit in the generalities of doctrine. The essays in this volume collectively probe the dynamic between literary form, religious faith and the process, psychology and ethics of knowing in early modern England. Addressing both the poetics of theological texts and literary treatments of theological matter, they stretch from the Reformation to the early Enlightenment, and cover a variety of themes ranging across religious hermeneutics, rhetoric and controversy, the role of the senses, and the entanglement of justice, ethics and practical theology. The book should appeal to scholars of early modern literature and culture, theologians and historians of religion, and general readers with a broad interest in Renaissance cultures of knowing.