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The Politics of Religious and Literary Culture in Reformation and Post-Reformation England: Some Recent Studies across the Disciplines Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie, eds., The Beginnings of English Protestantism Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xii, 242 pages
Brian Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. xx, 470 pages
Peter Lake with Michael Questier, The Antichrist's Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists, and Players in Post-Reformation England New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002. xii, 731 pages
The studies of religious and literary culture under review here each contribute significantly to the fields of early modern history and literature, including their interconnections. They are written by literary scholars working in depth with historical materials and, in some cases, by historians working in depth with literary texts. Indeed, historians working on shifting religious sensibilities in early modern England, notably Peter Lake and Michael Questier, reveal that they are now paying serious attention to the wide range of literary texts and genres produced in the period.' These books remind us that in early modern studies the fields of literature and of Reformation and post-Reformation history are more closely interrelated than ever before. These studies contribute, in particular, to the re-evaluation of religious change, conflict, and instability in early Reformation and post-Reformation England; and they examine the impact of religious conflict on literary culture, as well as the ways literary culture contributed to the Reformation and its controversies.
The Beginnings of English Protestantism, edited by Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie, intervenes in the debate about the origins and development of the English Reformation. This volume of essays challenges not only the Whig-Protestant grand narrative of the English Reformation (that is, that by the 15205 the people were eager to throw off the tyranny of the Roman Catholic Church so that by the reign of Edward VI [1547-53] England had become a decisively Protestant nation); more importantly, it also modifies the work of skeptical "revisionist" historians who have more recently stressed that English men and women were in fact reluctant to accept the Reformation, and that it was thus slow-moving and imposed by the state rather than welcomed by the people. A number of leading historians, including Christopher Haigh (who...