Forms of Faith Literary Form and Religious Conflict in Early Modern England

This collection of essays opens a new perspective on the interplay of religious conflict and literary culture in early modern England. Focusing on negotiation instead of escalation, thirteen distinguished international scholars explore the specific ways available to mediate, displace or suspend confessional conflict in and through literature.

This collection of essays explores a range of literary and theatrical forms as means of mediating religious conflict in early modern England. Over the last decade, the area of early modern studies has been significantly reshaped by a ‘religious turn’, which has generated vigorous discussion of the changes and conflicts brought about by the Reformation and the ways in which literature engaged with them. Despite the centrality of confessional conflict, however, it did not always erupt into hostilities over how to symbolize and perform the sacred; nor did it lead to a paralysis of social agency. Rather, people had to arrange themselves somehow with divided loyalties – between the old faith and the new, between religious and secular interests, between officially sanctioned and privately held beliefs.

The order of the day may well have been to suspend confessional allegiances rather than enforce religious conflict, suggesting a pragmatic rather than polemical handling of religious plurality, in social practice as well as in textual and dramatic representations. Can we conceive of literary representations as possible sites of de-escalation? Do different discursive, aesthetic or social contexts inflect or even deflect the demands of religious loyalties? How do textual or dramatic works both reflect on and perform such a suspension of confessional tensions? By placing the focus on negotiation instead of escalation, these thirteen essays by distinguished international scholars explore specific means of mediating religious conflict in a time when faith still mattered more than nationhood or race.

This book explores the role of literature as a means of mediating religious conflict in early modern England. Marking a new stage in the ‘religious turn’ that generated vigorous discussion of the changes and conflicts brought about by the Reformation, it unites new historicist readings with an interest in the ideological significance of aesthetic form. It proceeds from the assumption that confessional differences did not always erupt into hostilities but that people also had to arrange themselves with divided loyalties – between the old faith and the new, between religious and secular interests, between officially sanctioned and privately held beliefs. What role might literature have played here? Can we conceive of literary representations as possible sites of de-escalation? Do different discursive, aesthetic, or social contexts inflect or deflect the demands of religious loyalties? Such questions open a new perspective on post-Reformation English culture and literature.