Prayer, Despair, and Drama: Elizabethan Introspection

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University of Illinois Press, 1996 - History - 166 pages
"Strikingly original and beautifully written....Prayer, Despair,
and Drama is an extremely rich, complex study." -- John Corrigan,
Arizona State University West
Prayer, Despair, and Drama explores the godly sorrow and pious
dis-ease, or lack of ease, of Elizabethan Calvinists and finds that what
some have characterized as an evangelism of fear functioned more as a
kind of religious therapy.
In this major contribution to discussions of the relationship between
religion and literature in Elizabethan England, Peter Iver Kaufman argues
that the soul-searching and self-scourging typical of late Tudor Calvinism
was reflected in the rhetoric of self-loathing then prevalent in sermons,
sonnets, and soliloquys. Kaufman shows how this spiritual psychology informs
major literary texts including Hamlet, The Fairie Queene,
Donne's Holy Sonnets, and other works.
A volume in the series Studies in Anglican History, edited by Peter
W. Williams

From inside the book

Contents

Much in Prayer
15
Wretched
41
Hamlets Kind of Fighting
103
Conclusion
151
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