Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century English Drama

Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century English Drama
Author: Adrian Streete
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2017-08-17
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1108416144

Streete studies the political uses of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic rhetoric in a wide range of seventeenth-century English drama, focusing on the plays of Marston, Middleton, Massinger, and Dryden. Drawing on recent work in religious and political history, he rethinks how religion is debated in the early modern theatre.

Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century English Drama

Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century English Drama
Author: Adrian Streete
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2017-08-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 110824856X

This book examines the many and varied uses of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic language in seventeenth-century English drama. Adrian Streete argues that this rhetoric is not simply an expression of religious bigotry, nor is it only deployed at moments of political crisis. Rather, it is an adaptable and flexible language with national and international implications. It offers a measure of cohesion and order in a volatile century. By rethinking the relationship between theatre, theology and polemic, Streete shows how playwrights exploited these connections for a diverse range of political ends. Chapters focus on playwrights like Marston, Middleton, Massinger, Shirley, Dryden and Lee, and on a range of topics including imperialism, reason of state, commerce, prostitution, resistance, prophecy, church reform and liberty. Drawing on important recent work in religious and political history, this is a major re-interpretation of how and why religious ideas are debated in the early modern theatre.

Biblical Readings and Literary Writings in Early Modern England, 1558-1625

Biblical Readings and Literary Writings in Early Modern England, 1558-1625
Author: Victoria Brownlee
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2018-03-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0192540564

The Bible had a profound impact on early modern culture, and bible-reading shaped the period's drama, poetry, and life-writings, as well as sermons and biblical commentaries. This volume provides an account of the how the Bible was read and applied in early modern England. It maps the connection between these readings and various forms of writing and argues that literary writings bear the hallmarks of the period's dominant exegetical practices, and do interpretative work. Tracing the impact of biblical reading across a range of genres and writers, the discussion demonstrates that literary reimaginings of, and allusions to, the Bible were common, varied, and ideologically evocative. The book explores how a series of popularly interpreted biblical narratives were recapitulated in the work of a diverse selection of writers, some of whom remain relatively unknown. In early modern England, the figures of Solomon, Job, and Christ's mother, Mary, and the books of Song of Songs and Revelation, are enmeshed in different ways with contemporary concerns, and their usage illustrates how the Bible's narratives could be turned to a fascinating array of debates. In showing the multifarious contexts in which biblical narratives were deployed, this book argues that Protestant interpretative practices contribute to, and problematize, literary constructions of a range of theological, political, and social debates.

Catholicism Contending with Modernity

Catholicism Contending with Modernity
Author: Darrell Jodock
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2000-06-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780521770712

This 2000 book is a case study in the ongoing struggle of Christianity to define its relationship to modernity, examining representative Roman Catholic Modernists and anti-Modernists. It sketches the nineteenth-century background of the Modernist crisis, identifying the problems that the church was facing at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Origin and Authority in Seventeenth-Century England

Origin and Authority in Seventeenth-Century England
Author: Alvin Snider
Publisher:
Total Pages: 304
Release: 1994-08-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Snider concentrates on three texts: Bacon's Novum Organum, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Butler's Hudibras. He treats the concept of a definitive origin not just as a literary or historical tope but as a complex system of representation that informs the poetry, philosophy, and other writings of the period.

Memory and the English Reformation

Memory and the English Reformation
Author: Alexandra Walsham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2020-11-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108829996

Recasts the Reformation as a battleground over memory, in which new identities were formed through acts of commemoration, invention and repression.

Religion and Drama in Early Modern England

Religion and Drama in Early Modern England
Author: Elizabeth Williamson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2016-04-08
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1317068114

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.

Book Review Index

Book Review Index
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1080
Release: 2005
Genre: Books
ISBN:

Every 3rd issue is a quarterly cumulation.