First book to examine the Romantic poets' engagement with the religious debates that dominated the period.

This study takes a fresh look at the abundant scenarios of disguise in early modern prose fiction and suggests reading them in the light of the contemporary religio-political developments. More specifically, it argues that Elizabethan narratives adopt aspects of the heated Eucharist debate during the Reformation, including officially renounced notions like transubstantiation, to negotiate culturally pressing concerns regarding identity change. Drawing on the rich field of research on the adaptation of pre-Reformation concerns in Anglican England, the book traces a cross-fertilisation between the Reformation and the literary mode of romance. The study brings together topics which are currently being strongly debated in early modern studies: the turn to religion, a renewed interest in aesthetics, and a growing engagement with prose fiction. Narratives which are discussed in detail are William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat, Robert Greene’s Pandosto and Menaphon, Philip Sidney’s Old and New Arcadia, and Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynd and A Margarite of America, George Gascoigne’s Steele Glas, John Lyly’s Euphues: An Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and his England, Barnabe Riche’s Farewell, Greene’s A Quip for an Upstart Courtier, and Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller.

This study takes a fresh look at the abundant scenarios of disguise in early modern prose fiction and suggests reading them in the light of the contemporary religio-political developments. More specifically, it argues that Elizabethan narratives adopt aspects of the heated Eucharist debate during the Reformation, including officially renounced notions like transubstantiation, to negotiate culturally pressing concerns regarding identity change. Drawing on the rich field of research on the adaptation of pre-Reformation concerns in Anglican England, the book traces a cross-fertilisation between the Reformation and the literary mode of romance. The study brings together topics which are currently being strongly debated in early modern studies: the turn to religion, a renewed interest in aesthetics, and a growing engagement with prose fiction. Narratives which are discussed in detail are William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat, Robert Greene’s Pandosto and Menaphon, Philip Sidney’s Old and New Arcadia, and Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynd and A Margarite of America, George Gascoigne’s Steele Glas, John Lyly’s Euphues: An Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and his England, Barnabe Riche’s Farewell, Greene’s A Quip for an Upstart Courtier, and Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller.

C. S. Lewis said that Christianity works on us like every other myth, except it is a myth that really happened. Dwight Longenecker grabs this idea and runs with it, showing that the Christian story is the greatest story ever told because it gathers up what is true in all the fantasy stories of the world and makes them as solid, true, and real as a tribe of dusty nomads in the desert or the death of a carpenter-king. In The Romance of Religion Longenecker calls for the return of the romantic hero—the hero who knows his frailty and can fight the good fight with panache, humor, and courage. Conflict and romance are everywhere in the story of Christ, and our response is to dust off our armor, don our broad-brimmed hats, pick up our swords, and do battle for Christ with confidence, wonder, and joy. Is religion no more than a fairy tale? No, it is more than a fairy tale—much more: it is all the fairy tales and fantastic stories come true here and now. “This book is witty, whimsical, and deadly serious. With panache and aplomb, Dwight Longenecker sets out to prove that Christianity is, in every sense of the word, fabulous. And does he succeed in his quest? I encourage you to read it to find out.” —Michael Ward, senior research fellow, Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford, and professor of apologetics, Houston Baptist University “If you've never thought about the Christian faith as romance and story, then this book will introduce you to a whole new way of thinking.”—Frank Viola, author of God's Favorite Place on Earth

In this book, Emily Griffiths Jones examines the intersections of romance, religion, and politics in England between 1588 and 1688 to show how writers during this politically turbulent time used the genre of romance to construct diverse ideological communities for themselves. Right Romance argues for a recontextualized understanding of romance as a multigeneric narrative structure or strategy rather than a prose genre and rejects the common assumption that romance was a short-lived mode most commonly associated with royalist politics. Puritan republicans likewise found in romance strength, solace, and grounds for political resistance. Two key works that profoundly influenced seventeenth-century approaches to romance are Philip Sidney’s New Arcadia and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, which grappled with romance’s civic potential and its limits for a newly Protestant state. Jones examines how these works influenced writings by royalists and republicans during and after the English Civil War. Remaining chapters pair writers from both sides of the war in order to illuminate the ongoing ideological struggles over romance. John Milton is analyzed alongside Margaret Cavendish and Percy Herbert, and Lucy Hutchinson alongside John Dryden. In the final chapter, Jones studies texts by John Bunyan and Aphra Behn that are known for their resistance to generic categorization in an attempt to rethink romance’s relationship to election, community, gender, and generic form. Original and persuasive, Right Romance advances theoretical discussion about romance, pushing beyond the limits of the genre to discover its impact on constructions of national, communal, and personal identity.

Romances were among the most popular books in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries among both Protestant and Catholic readers. Modeled after Catholic narratives, particularly the lives of saints, these works emphasized the supernatural and the marvelous, themes commonly associated with Catholicism. In this book, Tiffany Jo Werth investigates how post-Reformation English authors sought to discipline romance, appropriating its popularity while distilling its alleged Catholic taint. Charged with bewitching readers, especially women, into lust and heresy, romances sold briskly even as preachers and educators denounced them as papist. Protestant reformers, as part of their broader indictment of Catholicism, sought to redirect certain elements of the Christian tradition, including this notorious literary genre. Werth argues that through the writing and circulation of romances, Protestants repurposed their supernatural and otherworldly motifs in order to “fashion,” as Edmund Spenser wrote, godly "vertuous" readers. Through careful examinations of the period’s most renowned romances—Sir Philip Sidney’s The Countess of Pembrokes Arcadia, Spenser’s The Faerie Queen, William Shakespeare’s Pericles, and Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania—Werth illustrates how post-Reformation writers struggled to transform the literary genre. As a result, the romance, long regarded as an archetypal form closely allied with generalized Christian motifs, emerged as a central tenet of the religious controversies that divided Renaissance England.

This book argues that Measure for Measure is not a cynical problem play but a comic romance through which Shakespeare examines Tudor humanism's desire to reform social ills through art.

Shakespeare explored this question in Measure for Measure at a time when the humanist consensus of roughly a century's duration in English culture seemed about to be eclipsed by a hardening of the positions of people who held opposing views on social issues."--BOOK JACKET.

A Christy Award-winning novel chronicling the forbidden romance between Martin Luther and his wife, Katharina von Bora, set against the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. She was a nun of noble birth. He was a heretic, a reformer, and an outlaw of the Holy Roman Empire. In the 16th century, nun Katharina von Bora’s fate fell no further than the Abbey. Until she read the writings of Martin Luther. His sweeping Catholic church reformation—condemning a cloistered life and promoting the goodness of marriage—awakened her desire for everything she’d been forbidden. Including Martin Luther himself. Despite the fact that the attraction and tension between them is undeniable, Luther holds fast to his convictions and remains isolated, refusing to risk anyone’s life but his own. And Katharina longs for love, but is strong-willed. She clings proudly to her class distinction, pining for nobility over the heart of a reformer. They couldn’t be more different. But as the world comes tumbling down around them, and with Luther’s threatened life a constant strain, these unlikely allies forge an unexpected bond of understanding, support and love. Together, they will alter the religious landscape forever. - Christy Award: Historical Romance Fiction Winner

Social media has ushered in a dramatic global shift in the nature of faith, social consciousness, and relationships. How do churches navigate the Digital Reformation? Tweet If You Heart Jesus brings the wisdom of ancient and medieval Christianity into conversation with contemporary theories of cultural change and the realities of social media, all to help churches navigate a landscape where faith, leadership, and community have taken on new meanings.