Download or read book Skepticism and Belief in Early Modern England written by Melissa M. Caldwell and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central thesis of this book is that skepticism was instrumental to the defense of orthodox religion and the development of the identity of the Church of England. Examining the presence of skepticism in non-fiction prose literature at four transitional moments in English Protestant history during which orthodoxy was challenged and revised, Melissa Caldwell argues that a skeptical mode of thinking is embedded in the literary and rhetorical choices made by English writers who straddle the project of reform and the maintenance of orthodoxy after the Reformation in England. Far from being a radical belief simply indicative of an emerging secularism, she demonstrates the varied and complex appropriations of skeptical thought in early modern England. By examining a selection of various kinds of literature-including religious polemic, dialogue, pamphlets, sermons, and treatises-produced at key moments in early modern England’s religious history, Caldwell shows how the writers under consideration capitalized on the unscripted moral space that emerged in the wake of the Reformation. The result was a new kind of discourse--and a new form of orthodoxy--that sought both to exploit and to contain the skepticism unearthed by the Reformation.
Download or read book Skepticism in Early Modern English Literature written by Anita Gilman Sherman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-29 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ambitious account of skepticism's effects on major authors of England's Golden Age shows how key philosophical problems inspired literary innovations in poetry and prose. When figures like Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert of Cherbury, Cavendish, Marvell and Milton question theories of language, degrees of knowledge and belief, and dwell on the uncertainties of perception, they forever change English literature, ushering it into a secular mode. While tracing a narrative arc from medieval nominalism to late seventeenth-century taste, the book explores the aesthetic pleasures and political quandaries induced by skeptical doubt. It also incorporates modern philosophical views of skepticism: those of Stanley Cavell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Roland Barthes, and Hans Blumenberg, among others. The book thus contributes to interdisciplinary studies of philosophy and literature as well as to current debates about skepticism as a secularizing force, fostering civil liberties and religious freedoms.
Download or read book Skepticism and Belief in Early Modern England written by Melissa M. Caldwell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central thesis of this book is that skepticism was instrumental to the defense of orthodox religion and the development of the identity of the Church of England. Examining the presence of skepticism in non-fiction prose literature at four transitional moments in English Protestant history during which orthodoxy was challenged and revised, Melissa Caldwell argues that a skeptical mode of thinking is embedded in the literary and rhetorical choices made by English writers who straddle the project of reform and the maintenance of orthodoxy after the Reformation in England. Far from being a radical belief simply indicative of an emerging secularism, she demonstrates the varied and complex appropriations of skeptical thought in early modern England. By examining a selection of various kinds of literature-including religious polemic, dialogue, pamphlets, sermons, and treatises-produced at key moments in early modern England’s religious history, Caldwell shows how the writers under consideration capitalized on the unscripted moral space that emerged in the wake of the Reformation. The result was a new kind of discourse--and a new form of orthodoxy--that sought both to exploit and to contain the skepticism unearthed by the Reformation.
Download or read book The Secularization of Early Modern England written by Charles John Sommerville and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study overcomes the ambiguity and daunting scale of the subject of secularization by using the insights of anthropology and sociology, and by examining an earlier period than usually considered. Concentrating not only on a decline of religious belief, which is the last aspect of secularization, this study shows that a transformation of England's cultural grammar had to precede that loosening of belief, and that this was largely accomplished between 1500 and 1700. Only when definitions of space and time changed and language and technology were transformed (as well as art and play) could a secular world-view be sustained. As aspects of daily life became divorced from religious values and controls, religious culture was supplanted by religious faith, a reasoned, rather than an unquestioned, belief in the supernatural. Sommerville shows that this process was more political and theological than economic or social.
Download or read book Religion Society in Early Modern England written by Lori Anne Ferrell and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thorough sourcebook and accessible student text covering the interplay between religion, politics, society and popular culture in the Tudor and Stuart periods. `An excellent and imaginative collection.' - Diarmaid MacCulloch
Download or read book Religion and Society in Early Modern England written by David Cressy and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a thorough sourcebook covering the interplay between religion, politics, society and popular culture in the Tudor and Stuart periods. It covers the crucial topics of the Reformation through narratives, reports, and parliamentary proceedings.
Download or read book Skepticism in Early Modern English Literature written by Anita Gilman Sherman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-29 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early modern skepticism contributed to literary invention, aesthetic pleasure, and the uneven process of secularization in England.
Download or read book The Time is Out of Joint written by Benjamin Bertram and published by University of Delaware Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The final decades of the sixteenth century brought tumultuous change in England. Bitter disputes concerning religious reformation divided Catholics and Protestants, radical reformers, and religious conservatives. The Church of England won the loyalty of many, but religious and political dissent continued. Social and economic change also created anxiety as social mobility, unemployment, riots, and rebellions exposed the weakness of an ideology of order. The Time is Out of Joint situates the work of four skeptics - Reginald Scot, Thomas Harriot, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare - within the context of religious and social change. These four writers responded to the dislocations of the newly formed Protestant nation by raising bold and often disturbing questions about religion and epistemology. The historical topics covered in this book - witchcraft debates, New World discovery, economic struggle, and religious reformation - reveal the diverse contexts in which skepticism appeared and the many contributions skepticism made to a nation undergoing radical change and in the process of re-thinking many of its longstanding basic assumptions.
Download or read book Religion and life cycles in early modern England written by Caroline Bowden and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion and life cycles in early modern England assembles scholars working in the fields of history, English literature and art history to further our understanding of the intersection between religion and the life course in the period c. 1550–1800. Featuring chapters on Catholic, Protestant and Jewish communities, it encourages cross-confessional comparison between life stages and rites of passage that were of religious significance to all faiths in early modern England. The book considers biological processes such as birth and death, aspects of the social life cycle including schooling, coming of age and marriage and understandings of religious transition points such as spiritual awakenings and conversion. Through this inclusive and interdisciplinary approach, it seeks to show that the life cycle was not something fixed or predetermined and that early modern individuals experienced multiple, overlapping life cycles.
Download or read book Religion and Drama in Early Modern England written by Elizabeth Williamson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering fuller understandings of both dramatic representations and the complexities of religious culture, this collection reveals the ways in which religion and performance were inextricably linked in early modern England. Its readings extend beyond the interpretation of straightforward religious allusions and suggest new avenues for theorizing the dynamic relationship between religious representations and dramatic ones. By addressing the particular ways in which commercial drama adapted the sensory aspects of religious experience to its own symbolic systems, the volume enacts a methodological shift towards a more nuanced semiotics of theatrical performance. Covering plays by a wide range of dramatists, including Shakespeare, individual essays explore the material conditions of performance, the intricate resonances between dramatic performance and religious ceremonies, and the multiple valences of religious references in early modern plays. Additionally, Religion and Drama in Early Modern England reveals the theater's broad interpretation of post-Reformation Christian practice, as well as its engagement with the religions of Islam, Judaism and paganism.
Download or read book Religion Magic and Science in Early Modern Europe and America written by Allison P. Coudert and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-10-17 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating study looks at how the seemingly incompatible forces of science, magic, and religion came together in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries to form the foundations of modern culture. As Religion, Magic, and Science in Early Modern Europe and America makes clear, the early modern period was one of stark contrasts: witch burnings and the brilliant mathematical physics of Isaac Newton; John Locke's plea for tolerance and the palpable lack of it; the richness of intellectual and artistic life, and the poverty of material existence for all but a tiny percentage of the population. Yet, for all the poverty, insecurity, and superstition, the period produced a stunning galaxy of writers, artists, philosophers, and scientists. This book looks at the conditions that fomented the emergence of such outstanding talent, innovation, and invention in the period 1450 to 1800. It examines the interaction between religion, magic, and science during that time, the impossibility of clearly differentiating between the three, and the impact of these forces on the geniuses who laid the foundation for modern science and culture.
Download or read book Alchemical Belief written by Bruce Janacek and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-08-21 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What did it mean to believe in alchemy in early modern England? In this book, Bruce Janacek considers alchemical beliefs in the context of the writings of Thomas Tymme, Robert Fludd, Francis Bacon, Sir Kenelm Digby, and Elias Ashmole. Rather than examine alchemy from a scientific or medical perspective, Janacek presents it as integrated into the broader political, philosophical, and religious upheavals of the first half of the seventeenth century, arguing that the interest of these elite figures in alchemy was part of an understanding that supported their national—and in some cases royalist—loyalty and theological orthodoxy. Janacek investigates how and why individuals who supported or were actually placed at the traditional center of power in England’s church and state believed in the relevance of alchemy at a time when their society, their government, their careers, and, in some cases, their very lives were at stake.
Download or read book Wonder and Skepticism in the Middle Ages written by Keagan Brewer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wonder and Skepticism in the Middle Ages explores the response by medieval society to tales of marvels and the supernatural, which ranged from firm belief to outright rejection, and asks why the believers believed, and why the skeptics disbelieved. This work argues that the epistemological nature of medieval knowledge encouraged belief, a society organised around orality sought evidence and authority in people with status and theological explanations. However there were still a great many who disbelieved, and in particular scholastic philosophers from the twelfth-century whose work should be seen as the ideological development underpinning early modern scientific advances.
Download or read book Anti Atheism in Early Modern England 1580 1720 written by Kenneth Sheppard and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anti-Atheism in Early Modern England traces the emergence and transformation of a distinct apologetic discourse called the confutation of atheism.
Download or read book The Extraordinary and the Everyday in Early Modern England written by A. McShane and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-05-28 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating collection of essays by renowned and emerging scholars exploring how everyday matters from farting to friendship reveal extraordinary aspects of early modern life, while seemingly exceptional acts and beliefs – such as those of ghosts, prophecies, and cannibalism – illuminate something of the routine experience of ordinary people.
Download or read book The Body in Parts written by David Hillman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of how the body--its organs, limbs, and viscera--were represented in the literature and culture of early modern Europe. This provocative volume demonstrates, the symbolism of body parts challenge our assumptions about "the body" as a fundamental Renaissance image of self, society, and nation.
Download or read book Skepticism and Political Thought in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries written by John Christian Laursen and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection, thirteen distinguished contributors examine the influence of the ancient skeptical philosophy of Pyrrho of Elis and Sextus Empiricus on early modern political thought. Classical skepticism argues that in the absence of certainty one must either suspend judgment and live by habit or act on the basis of probability rather than certainty. In either case, one must reject dogmatic confidence in politics and philosophy. Surveying the use of skepticism in works by Hobbes, Descartes, Hume, Smith, and Kant, among others, the essays in Skepticism and Political Thought in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries demonstrate the pervasive impact of skepticism on the intellectual landscape of early modern Europe. This volume is not just an authoritative account of skepticism’s importance from the Enlightenment to the French Revolution, it is also the basis for understanding skepticism’s continuing political implications.
