Examines the use by writers of English versions of the Bible in sixteenth-century England.

English drama at the beginning of the sixteenth century was allegorical, didactic and moralistic; but by the end of the century theatre was censured as emotional and even immoral. How could such a change occur? Kent Cartwright suggests that some theories of early Renaissance theatre - particularly the theory that Elizabethan plays are best seen in the tradition of morality drama - need to be reconsidered. He proposes instead that humanist drama of the sixteenth century is theatrically exciting - rather than literary, elitist and dull as it has often been seen - and socially significant, and he attempts to integrate popular and humanist values rather than setting them against each other. Taking as examples the plays of Marlowe, Heywood, Lyly and Greene, as well as many by lesser-known dramatists, the book demonstrates the contribution of humanist drama to the theatrical vitality of the sixteenth century.

Reading Sixteenth-Century Poetry combines close readings of individual poems with a critical consideration of the historical context in which they were written. Informative and original, this book has been carefully designed to enable readers to understand, enjoy, and be inspired by sixteenth-century poetry. Close reading of a wide variety of sixteenth-century poems, canonical and non-canonical, by men and by women, from print and manuscript culture, across the major literary modes and genres Poems read within their historical context, with reference to five major cultural revolutions: Renaissance humanism, the Reformation, the modern nation-state, companionate marriage, and the scientific revolution Offers in-depth discussion of Skelton, Wyatt, Surrey, Isabella Whitney, Gascoigne, Philip Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Mary Sidney Herbert, Donne, and Shakespeare Presents a separate study of all five of Shakespeare’s major poems - Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, 'The Phoenix and Turtle,' the Sonnets, and A Lover's Complaint- in the context of his dramatic career Discusses major works of literary criticism by Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Philip Sidney, George Puttenham, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Seamus Heaney, Adrienne Rich, and Helen Vendler

This volume explores the development of literary culture in sixteenth-century England as a whole and seeks to explain the relationship between the Reformation and the literary renaissance of the Elizabethan period. Its central theme is the 'common' in its double sense of something shared and something base, and it argues that making common the work of God is at the heart of the English Reformation just as making common the literature of antiquity and of early modern Europe is at the heart of the English Renaissance. Its central question is 'why was the Renaissance in England so late?' That question is addressed in terms of the relationship between Humanism and Protestantism and the tensions between democracy and the imagination which persist throughout the century. Part One establishes a social dimension for literary culture in the period by exploring the associations of 'commonwealth' and related terms. It addresses the role of Greek in the period before and during the Reformation in disturbing the old binary of elite Latin and common English. It also argues that the Reformation principle of making common is coupled with a hostility towards fiction, which has the effect of closing down the humanist renaissance of the earlier decades. Part Two presents translation as the link between Reformation and Renaissance, and the final part discusses the Elizabethan literary renaissance and deals in turn with poetry, short prose fiction, and the drama written for the common stage.

The Bible was, by any measure, the most important book in early modern England. It preoccupied the scholarship of the era, and suffused the idioms of literature and speech. Political ideas rode on its interpretation and deployed its terms. It was intricately related to the project of natural philosophy. And it was central to daily life at all levels of society from parliamentarian to preacher, from the 'boy that driveth the plough', famously invoked by Tyndale, to women across the social scale. It circulated in texts ranging from elaborate folios to cheap catechisms; it was mediated in numerous forms, as pictures, songs, and embroideries, and as proverbs, commonplaces, and quotations. Bringing together leading scholars from a range of fields, The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England, 1530-1700 explores how the scriptures served as a generative motor for ideas, and a resource for creative and political thought, as well as for domestic and devotional life. Sections tackle the knotty issues of translation, the rich range of early modern biblical scholarship, Bible dissemination and circulation, the changing political uses of the Bible, literary appropriations and responses, and the reception of the text across a range of contexts and media. Where existing scholarship focuses, typically, on Tyndale and the King James Bible of 1611, The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in England, 1530-1700 goes further, tracing the vibrant and shifting landscape of biblical culture in the two centuries following the Reformation.

Prostitute, apostle, evangelist—the conversion of Mary Magdalene from sinner to saint is one of the Christian tradition’s most compelling stories, and one of the most controversial. The identity of the woman—or, more likely, women—represented by this iconic figure has been the subject of dispute since the Church’s earliest days. Much less appreciated is the critical role the Magdalene played in remaking modern Christianity. In a vivid recreation of the Catholic and Protestant cultures that emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, The Magdalene in the Reformation reveals that the Magdalene inspired a devoted following among those eager to find new ways to relate to God and the Church. In popular piety, liturgy, and preaching, as well as in education and the arts, the Magdalene tradition provided both Catholics and Protestants with the flexibility to address the growing need for reform. Margaret Arnold shows that as the medieval separation between clergy and laity weakened, the Magdalene represented a new kind of discipleship for men and women and offered alternative paths for practicing a Christian life. Where many have seen two separate religious groups with conflicting preoccupations, Arnold sees Christians who were often engaged in a common dialogue about vocation, framed by the life of Mary Magdalene. Arnold disproves the idea that Protestants removed saints from their theology and teaching under reform. Rather, devotion to Mary Magdalene laid the foundation within Protestantism for the public ministry of women.

This 1987 book was the first full-scale study of English metrical Psalms to be published in the twentieth century.

The Catholic contribution to English literary culture has been widely neglected or misunderstood. This book sets out to rehabilitate a wide range of Catholic imaginative writing, while exposing the role of anti-Catholicism as an imaginative stimulus to mainstream writers in Tudor and Stuart England. It discusses canonical figures such as Sidney, Spenser, Webster and Middleton, those whose presence in the canon has been more fitful, and many who have escaped the attention of literary critics. Among the themes to emerge are the anti-Catholic imagery of revenge tragedy and the definitive contribution made by Southwell and Crashaw to the post-Reformation revival of religious verse in England. Alison Shell offers a fascinating exploration of the rhetorical stratagems by which Catholics sought to demonstrate simultaneous loyalties to the monarch and to their religion, and of the stimulus given to the Catholic literary imagination by the persecution and exile so many of these writers suffered.