Radical Religion from Shakespeare to Milton: Figures of Nonconformity in Early Modern England

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Cambridge University Press, Mar 30, 2006 - Biography & Autobiography - 288 pages
The figure of the puritan has long been conceived as dour and repressive in character, an image which has been central to ways of reading sixteenth- and seventeenth-century history and literature. Kristen Poole's original study challenges this perception arguing that, contrary to current critical understanding, radical reformers were most often portrayed in literature of the period as deviant, licentious and transgressive. Through extensive analysis of early modern pamphlets, sermons, poetry and plays, the fictional puritan emerges as a grotesque and carnivalesque figure; puritans are extensively depicted as gluttonous, sexually promiscuous, monstrously procreating, and even as worshipping naked. By recovering this lost alternative satirical image, Poole sheds new light on the role played by anti-puritan rhetoric. Her book contends that such representations served an important social role, providing an imaginative framework for discussing familial, communal and political transformations that resulted from the Reformation.
 

Contents

The puritan in the alehouse Falstaff and the drama of Martin Marprelate
16
Eating disorder feasting fasting and the puritan bellygod at Bartholomew Fair
45
Lewd conversations the perversions of the Family of Love
74
Dissecting sectarianism swarms forms and Thomas Edwardss Gangrena
104
The descent of dissent monstrous genealogies and Miltons antiprelatical tracts
124
Not so much as jig leaves Adamites naked Quakers linguistic perfection and Paradise Lost
147
the fortunes of Hudibras
182
Notes
187
Selected bibliography of pamphlets and sermons
241
Index
258
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