Overview

The Protestant Reformation placed intense scrutiny on religious belief in early modern England. But how did this belief work? What resources did it draw on? How did such a faith differ from other kinds of assent? In this interdisciplinary study, Joseph Ashmore argues that early modern literature became a key site for handling these questions. Focusing on late sixteenth- to mid seventeenth-century writing, he shows how Protestant authors turned to contemporary legal discourses to represent and analyse faith. Techniques for evaluating courtroom testimony became a powerful tool for investigating what was distinctive about religious belief. Examining the sermons of Lancelot Andrewes and John Donne, the philosophy and prose fiction of Francis Bacon, and the poems of Henry Vaughan, Ashmore shows how legal notions of evidence shaped discussions of faith across a number of different genres, and within a variety of social and political contexts.

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9781009564045

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Reviews

An engaging and finely-written account of the abrasive relationship between belief and legality, hard argument and faith. Ashmore's forensic approach to early modern literature – from Donne to Vaughan, Andrewes to Bacon – shows how this writing shaped and was shaped by a near-endless set of legal, exegetical and confessional brawls. Kevin Killeen, Professor of Renaissance Literature, University of York A rich and learned book, Making Belief shows that faith, trust, and belief were, in the seventeenth century, not just key terms of theological and philosophical debates about changing ways of encountering God, other people, and the world, but artefacts of literary and rhetorical technique. It is, itself, entirely persuasive. Kathryn Murphy, Associate Professor of English Literature, Oriel College, University of Oxford

Author Information

Joseph Ashmore is a researcher focusing on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature. His published work has investigated early modern religious writing, including sermons, devotional poetry and the material culture of post-Reformation England. He has held teaching and research positions at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and Magdalen College, Oxford.

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