Confessions of faith in early modern England / Brooke Conti.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Conti, Brooke.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English literature.

Religion and literature--England--History--17th century.

Religion and literature.

Authors, English--Religious life.

Authors, English.

Autobiography--Religious aspects.

Autobiography.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (236 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

As seventeenth-century England wrestled with the aftereffects of the Reformation, the personal frequently conflicted with the political. In speeches, political pamphlets, and other works of religious controversy, writers from the reign of James I to that of James II unexpectedly erupt into autobiography. John Milton famously interrupts his arguments against episcopacy with autobiographical accounts of his poetic hopes and dreams, while John Donne's attempts to describe his conversion from Catholicism wind up obscuring rather than explaining. Similar moments appear in the works of Thomas Browne, John Bunyan, and the two King Jameses themselves. These autobiographies are familiar enough that their peculiarities have frequently been overlooked in scholarship, but as Brooke Conti notes, they sit uneasily within their surrounding material as well as within the conventions of confessional literature that preceded them. Confessions of Faith in Early Modern England positions works such as Milton's political tracts, Donne's polemical and devotional prose, Browne's Religio Medici, and Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners as products of the era's tense political climate, illuminating how the pressures of public self-declaration and allegiance led to autobiographical writings that often concealed more than they revealed. For these authors, autobiography was less a genre than a device to negotiate competing political, personal, and psychological demands. The complex works Conti explores provide a privileged window into the pressures placed on early modern religious identity, underscoring that it was no simple matter for these authors to tell the truth of their interior life—even to themselves.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Note on Spelling and Punctuation

Introduction

Chapter 1. James VI and I and the Autobiographical Double Bind

Chapter 2. Conversion and Confession in Donne’s Prose

Chapter 3. Milton and Autobiography in Crisis

Chapter 4. Thomas Browne’s Uneasy Confession of Faith

Chapter 5 John Bunyan’s Double Autobiography

Chapter 6 James II and the End of the Confession of Faith

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780812209211

0812209214

OCLC:

869904636