This book examines the relationship between literature and religious conflict in seventeenth-century England, showing how literary texts grew out of and addressed the contemporary controversy over ceremonial worship. Examining the meaning and function of religion in seventeenth-century England, the book shows that the conflicts over religious ceremony which were central to the English Revolution had broad cultural significance; they involved not only conflicting attitudes towards art and the body, but a clash between different ways of constructing social relations, human identity, and the relation of the Protestant present to the Jewish, pagan and Catholic past. Achsah Guibbory's readings of Herbert, Herrick, Browne, Donne and Milton explain how their writings show what was at stake in the conflict over ceremonial worship, and how different ideas of community turned on that conflict.

Original readings of Herbert, Herrick, Browne and Milton in the context of seventeenth-century religious conflict.
Reviews
'... painstaking research into religious controversy.' The Times Literary Supplement



Book Information
ISBN 9780521032445
Author Achsah Guibbory
Format Paperback
Page Count 292
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 438g
Dimensions(mm) 227mm * 150mm * 15mm