Discourses of Suffering

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Confessions of Faith in Early Modern England.

  CONTI, Brooke. 2014 Examines such works as Milton’s political tracts, Donne’s polemical and devotional prose, Browne’s Religio Medici, and Bunyan’s Grace Abounding in the context of the contemporary political climate, and showing how autobiography was used to negotiate political, personal, and psychological demands.  

Irregular Unions. Clandestine Marriage in Early Modern English Literature.

  CLELAND, Katharine. 2021 A “literary history of clandestine marriage in early modern England, revealing its controversial nature in the wake of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, which standardized the marriage ritual for the first time”. Through an examination of such works as The Faerie Queene, Othello, and The Merchant of Venice, Cleland “argues that early […]

The History of the Gun-Powder Plot, with Several Historical Circumstances Prior to that Event.

  CAULFIELD, James. 1804 A Protestant account. Caulfield provides a comprehensive narrative of the events and circumstances surrounding the Gunpowder Plot from a historical perspective. The book connects the Gunpowder Plot to broader alleged plots by Roman Catholics to re-establish Catholicism as the dominant religion in England, and presents the Gunpowder Plot as part of […]

Book of Hours, Use of Angers (c. 1490)

Book of Hours, Use of Angers (c. 1490) (The numbering of Psalms follows the King James Authorised Version throughout.) Click here to view the complete manuscript. Before the advent of printing, books were written by hand. Such books took months, even years to complete. The most popular book was the Book of Hours, a collection […]

The Gunpowder Plot

When King James VI of Scotland became the King of England (March 24, 1603), Catholics were hoping he would be more tolerant than his predecessor, Elizabeth I. Those hopes died on February 22, 1604, when James expelled all Jesuits and seminary priests. A few weeks later, on March 19, 1604, he made his opposition to […]

The Popish Plot

The Popish Plot was an alleged Jesuit conspiracy to kill King Charles II and install his Catholic brother, James, as king. The conspiracy was entirely fabricated, concocted by an inglorious character by the name of Titus Oates (pictured above), who, in September, 1678, made a sworn deposition to Edmund Godfrey, a justice of the peace, […]

Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford

Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford Together with his ally William Laud, the Earl of Strafford (1593-1641) played a crucial role as Lord-Deputy of Ireland, enforcing the so-called “Thorough” policies in Ireland. He developed and extended the policy of promoting the interests of newly-arrived Protestant settlers from Scotland and England and driving the native Irish from their […]

Literature and terrorism

The go-to guy for an understanding of the ways in which terrorism has been represented in literature is Peter C. Herman, author of Terrorism and Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Unspeakable: Literature and Terrorism from the Gunpowder Plot to 9/11 (Routledge, 2019). Although his scope is broader than the early modern period, he devotes […]