In the climactic part of his three-book series exploring the importance of public image in the Tudor and Stuart monarchies, Kevin Sharpe employs a remarkable interdisciplinary approach that draws on literary studies and art history as well as political, cultural, and social history to show how this preoccupation with public representation met the challenge of dealing with the aftermath of Cromwell's interregnum and Charles II's restoration, and how the irrevocably changed cultural landscape was navigated by the sometimes astute yet equally fallible Stuart monarchs and their successors.
The Oxford English Literary History is the new century's definitive account of a rich and diverse literary heritage that stretches back for a millennium and more. This volume covers 1645 to 1714, which saw the rise of new media forms, and transformations in performance spaces, bookselling, and the concept of authorship.
The Beauty of Holiness: The Caroline Divines and Their Writings offers an expansive and detailed portrait of the continued maturation of Anglican theology and devotion in the central half of the seventeenth century. The Caroline Divines have long been hailed as the patrons of an Anglican ‘golden age’. Their emphasis upon liturgical renewal and development, like their emphases upon learning and piety, have had a pervasive influence on the Anglican ethos that extends down to our own day. The Beauty of Holiness includes selections from key figures such as Lancelot Andrewes, John Cosin, and Jeremy Taylor, but also expands the canon of Caroline divinity to include lay writings, some of which were published posthumously. Traditional topics such as sacramental theology and private devotion are complimented by readings on poetry as a spiritual discipline, natural theology, and the importance of family prayers. Chapters survey diverse facets of Anglican orthodoxy such as liturgical practice, the cult of King Charles the Martyr, and defenses of the celebration of Christmas, while an introductory essay sets these developments within the historical context. The Beauty of Holiness thus functions as both an introduction to the Anglican past and a catechism for the Anglican present.
The Oxford English Literary History is the new century's definitive account of a rich and diverse literary heritage that stretches back for a millennium and more. Each of these thirteen groundbreaking volumes offers a leading scholar's considered assessment of the authors, works, cultural traditions, events, and ideas that shaped the literary voices of their age. The series will enlighten and inspire not only everyone studying, teaching, and researching in English Literature, but all serious readers. This Companion Volume to Volume V: 1645-1714: The Later Seventeenth Century presents a series of complementary readings of texts and events of the period. J. M. Ezell removes the traditional literary period labels and boundaries used in earlier studies to categorize the literary culture of late seventeenth-century England. She invites readers to explore the continuities and the literary innovations occurring during six turbulent decades, as English readers and writers lived through unprecedented events including a King tried and executed by Parliament and another exiled, the creation of the national entity 'Great Britain', and an expanding English awareness of the New World as well as encounters with the cultures of Asia and the subcontinent. The period saw the establishment of new concepts of authorship and it saw a dramatic increase of women working as professional, commercial writers. London theatres closed by law in 1642 reopened with new forms of entertainments from musical theatrical spectaculars to contemporary comedies of manners with celebrity actors and actresses. Emerging literary forms such as epistolary fictions and topical essays were circulated and promoted by new media including newspapers, periodical publications, and advertising and laws were changing governing censorship and taking the initial steps in the development of copyright. It was a period which produced some of the most profound and influential literary expressions of religious faith from John Milton's Paradise Lost and John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, while simultaneously giving rise to a culture of libertinism and savage polemical satire, as well as fostering the new dispassionate discourses of experimental sciences and the conventions of popular romance.
Die Studie analysiert die politische Dimension protestantischer und römisch-katholischer Predigten an den Höfen von Karl II. (1660–1685) und Jakob II. (1685–1688/89), vor dem englischen Parlament und in den Kirchen Londons. Vor dem Hintergrund ungelöster politischer und konfessioneller Spannungen nach der Restauration, suchten Predigten mit Kritik an Machthabern und deren Beratung, Einfluss auf den religiösen und politischen Diskurs zu nehmen. Das Verhältnis von geistlicher und weltlicher Macht sowie der Umgang mit der multikonfessionellen Situation in England sind dabei zentrale Themen. Das Vorhandensein einer differenzierten Rezeptionskultur, für die Predigten als einmalige Aufführung und als Texte bedeutsam waren, zeigt die fortbestehende Wichtigkeit der Predigt in der Restauration. In this volume Christoph Ketterer analyses political preaching during the reigns of Charles II (1660–1685) and James II (1685–1688/89). He argues that the political importance of sermons preached at court, before Parliament and in the churches of London, is based on the unsolved political, and confessional tensions of the era. Preachers relatively freely discussed questions of religious tolerance, models of political power, and could offer counsel and criticism to those in power. They were in a position to influence the political and religious discourse of Restoration England. In addition, a refined culture of reception existed, and listeners, readers as well as preachers were acutely aware of the sermon genre's performative dimension. Sermons therefore continued to be of central importance for the political and religious discourse of the Restoration.
