Overview

In this new study, Donna B. Hamilton offers a major revisionist reading of the works of Anthony Munday, one of the most prolific authors of his time, who wrote and translated in many genres, including polemical religious and political tracts, poetry, chivalric romances, history of Britain, history of London, drama, and city entertainments. Long dismissed as a hack who wrote only for money, Munday is here restored to his rightful position as an historical figure at the centre of many important political and cultural events in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. In Anthony Munday and the Catholics, 1560-1633, Hamilton reinterprets Munday as a writer who began his career writing on behalf of the Catholic cause and subsequently negotiated for several decades the difficult terrain of an ever-changing Catholic-Protestant cultural, religious, and political landscape. She argues that throughout his life and writing career Munday retained his Catholic sensibility and occasionally wrote dangerously on behalf of Catholics. Thus he serves as an excellent case study through which present-day scholars can come to a fuller understanding of how a person living in this turbulent time in English history - eschewing open resistance, exile or martyrdom - managed a long and prolific writing career at the centre of court, theatre, and city activities but in ways that reveal his commitment to Catholic political and religious ideology. Individual chapters in this book cover Munday's early writing, 1577-80; his writing about the trial and execution of Jesuit Edmund Campion; his writing for the stage, 1590-1602; his politically inflected translations of chivalric romance; and his writings for and about the city of London, 1604-33. Hamilton revisits and revalues the narratives told by earlier scholars about hack writers, the anti-theatrical tracts, the role of the Earl of Oxford as patron, the political-religious interests of Munday's plays, the implications of Mu

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9780754606079

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Reviews

Donna Hamilton's meticulously researched study, making full use of the latest historical work on post-Reformation Catholicism, transforms the familiar landmarks of Elizabethan literary history. Munday's endlessly varied strategies of indirection in pushing beyond the official limits of political discourse will make us think again about the ideological stances of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. David Norbrook, Merton Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford Hamilton's significant and timely study of Munday rescues from oblivion a range of literary and polemical works that were widely known in their own day but until now have received little critical attention. Her insightful and provocative analysis offers a convincing new interpretation of Munday's writings, showing how under the guise of an orthodox Protestant, Munday discreetly promoted a dissident Catholic agenda in his writings while maintaining unswerving loyalty to the English crown. Arguing that in early modern England religious identities and political affiliations were complexly interwoven, Hamilton helps us to understand how writers could express religious dissent while remaining within the mainstream of the literary-political culture. Christopher Highley, Professor of English, The Ohio State University 'Donna Hamilton offers a major revisionist reading of the works of Anthony Munday, one of the most prolific authors of this time...' De Vere Society Newsletter '... Hamilton's detailed and compelling scrutiny... invaluable study...' TLS 'This is a very learned book about the life and work of a writer who managed to work both sides of the Catholic/Protestant conflict in a very bloody period in English history...Recommended.' Choice 'This book performs two valuable tasks, which sometimes pull in different directions. On the one hand, it serves as a comprehensive guide to Munday's copious and under-researched output [...] On the other, it uses the figure of Munday to ask questions about how someone of his beliefs could promulgate, in his writings, a loyal, discreet pro-Catholic line. All of Munday's works are given a detailed reading in the light of the latter programme... the argument works brilliantly, setting new standards in sensitivity to Catholic nuance... Any work of non-fiction can take one only so far, but Hamilton identifies a quandary that it would take a novelist, or Monday's collaborator Shakespeare, to explain.' Church Times 'Hamilton admirably handles the task of examining and interpreting the varied works Munday exposed, translated, or revised over the course of a writing career of some four decades... What Donna Hamilton has done in her examination of the life and writings of Anthony Munday is a fine example of historically informed close reading, but the larger picture that emerges of Elizabethan and early Stuart culture is also quite valuable.' The Catholic Historical Review '... a wealth of detailed investigation...' Religion and the Arts 'Hamilton's book is thoroughly researched to the point that a familiarity with Munday's career and writings is almost presupposed.' Recusant History '... an exciting, if at times provocative new contribution to our understanding of this overlooked figure. In devoting a book-length study to Munday's entire literary output and not simply selected texts, Hamilton takes part in redressing the relative neglect that Munday's texts have been subjected to... Hamilton is both thorough and original in her engagement with Munday's printed materials... by offering so careful a reading of a writer so often overlooked, Hamilton invites future readers to reconsider the assumptions behind the critical perspectives that may have led to so glaring an oversight in the first place.' Early Modern Literary Studies 'As an exploration of Munday's literary agenda, this book is thorough and persuasive, and the conclusions are eloquent of a wide and deep problem which afflicted the English Church.' Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte '... it has much to offer in terms of theatrical culture and production.' The Year's Work in English Studies 'Donna Hamilton has written an intriguing revisionist account of Munday... Hamilton does an admirable job in her first task: retrieving Munday from the literary limbo in which he and much of his corpus has languished.' Sixteenth Century Journal 'Donna Hamilton's book contributes to ongoing critical debates about Munday, and her provocative argument, based on close readings of a wide range of Munday's works, will no doubt prompt interesting responses.' Journal of British Studies '... an important book, and it should be read by all those who engage in debate about Shakespeare's Catholicism, because it makes a strong case for the Catholic allegiance of a man who was almost Shakespeare's exact contemporary...' Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England

Author Information

Donna B. Hamilton is Professor of English at the University of Maryland, USA.

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