Catholicism, controversy, and the English literary imagination, 1558-1660 / Alison Shell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shell, Alison, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Catholic Church--Controversial literature--History and criticism.

Catholic Church.

Catholic Church--In literature.

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

English literature.

English literature--Catholic authors--History and criticism.

Christianity and literature--England--History--16th century.

Christianity and literature.

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

Christian literature, English--History and criticism.

Christian literature, English.

Catholics--England--History--16th century.

Catholics.

Catholics--England--History--17th century.

Catholics--England--Intellectual life.

Anti-Catholicism in literature.

Catholics in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 309 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Catholicism, Controversy & the English Literary Imagination, 1558-1660

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

The livid flash: decadence, anti-Catholic revenge tragedy and the dehistoricised critic

Catholic poetics and the Protestant canon

Catholic loyalism: I. Elizabethan writers

Catholic loyalism: II. Stuart writers

The subject of exile: I

The subject of exile: II.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 300-302) and index.

ISBN:

1-107-11378-4

0-511-00724-8

1-280-16171-X

0-511-11660-8

0-511-14995-6

0-511-30993-7

0-511-48398-8

0-511-05387-8

OCLC:

475870130