Overview

      ""Strikingly original and beautifully written....Prayer, Despair,         and Drama is an extremely rich, complex study."" -- John Corrigan,         Arizona State University West       Prayer, Despair, and Drama explores the godly sorrow and pious         dis-ease, or lack of ease, of Elizabethan Calvinists and finds that what         some have characterized as an evangelism of fear functioned more as a         kind of religious therapy.       In this major contribution to discussions of the relationship between         religion and literature in Elizabethan England, Peter Iver Kaufman argues         that the soul-searching and self-scourging typical of late Tudor Calvinism         was reflected in the rhetoric of self-loathing then prevalent in sermons,         sonnets, and soliloquys. Kaufman shows how this spiritual psychology informs         major literary texts including Hamlet,The Fairie Queene,         Donne's Holy Sonnets, and other works.             A volume in the series Studies in Anglican History, edited by Peter         W. Williams  

Full Product Details

9780252022227

Table of Contents

Reviews

Scholars of the English Renaissance will profit from this book by a historian of religion... But for the literary scholar the value of the book lies in the insights Kaufman provides into the religious culture of the late sixteenth century... By offering a glimpse of what Kaufman convincingly argues is a sizable swath of cultural consciousness, this study ought to help us rethink the interpretation of religion and literary discourse in early modern Europe. -- Richard Mallette, Journal of English and Germanic Philology

Author Information

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available