Common: The Development of Literary Culture in Sixteenth-Century England

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Middle Part ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
English Renaissance ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Literary Renaissance

This book attempts to see the development of literary culture in sixteenth-century England as a whole and to explain the relationship between the Reformation and the literary renaissance of the Elizabethan period. Its central theme is ‘the common’ in its double sense of something shared and something base, and it argues that making common the work of God is at the heart of the English Reformation, just as making common the literature of antiquity and of early modern Europe is at the heart of the English Renaissance. The book addresses the central question of why the Renaissance in England arrived so late in terms of the relationship between humanism and Protestantism and the tensions between democracy and the imagination which persist throughout the century. The first part of the book establishes a social dimension for literary culture in the period by exploring the associations of ‘commonwealth’ and related terms. It then addresses the role of Greek in the period before and during the Reformation in disturbing the old binary of elite Latin and common English. It argues that the Reformation principle of making common is coupled with a hostility towards fiction, which has the effect of closing down the humanist renaissance of the earlier decades. The final part of the book discusses the Elizabethan literary renaissance and deals in turn with poetry, short prose fiction, and the drama written for the common stage. In between, the middle part of the book presents translation as the link between Reformation and Renaissance.

A Reappraisal of William Tyndale's Debt to Martin Luther

1962 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. J. Trinterud
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common

The colorful and powerful figure of Martin Luther dominates all study of the early years of the Reformation. Inevitably the first pages of the history of the Reformation in any region will begin with an effort by the author to trace the manner in which Luther's influence reached that area. In the study of the English Reformation one of the common ways of showing Luther's influence is to point to the work of the Bible translator William Tyndale. Numerous books on the English Reformation, on the history of the English Bible, and on Tyndale himself, have made of him a follower and an interpreter of Luther who played a major role in introducing the thought of the great reformer into England. A careful study of Tyndale's works, however, will show that his debt to Luther, and the “Lutheranism” of his views, has been over-stated. Tyndale, like many early sixteenth century religious reformers, made much use of Luther's name, fame, and works but without becoming a follower of those distinctive ideas of the German reformer which set him off from the other advocates of reform at the time. Tyndale's greatest debt was first to Christian humanism and then to the German-Swiss reformers of Zurich and Basel.

The English Reformation Revisited

1996 ◽  
Vol 4 (18) ◽  
pp. 446-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicity Heal
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Marked Change ◽  
Historical Thinking ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

I was asked by the Society to provide an introduction to current historical thinking about the English Reformation in the first talk to the 1995 Conference. The ensuing lecture was deliberately intended to provide guidance through the minefield of controversy about the success of Reformation for those with only limited knowledge of sixteenth-century history. Debates about the Reformation have always been of obvious importance to both theologians and historians: they have usually in the past been profoundly influenced by confessional ideologies. In the last thirty years the nature of the questions asked about Reformation has undergone marked change: specifically the issue of popular religious belief and practice has assumed a centrality it never before possessed. But new questions have not brought closer agreement on the nature of religious change, and in recent years fierce debate has continued to rage on such issues as the vitality of late medieval Catholicism, the popularity of the early reformers and the motives of Henry VIII and his successors. Some, at least, of these controversies are still bound up with Protestant, Catholic and Anglican identities in the late twentieth century. Since the continuities between past and present were the theme of last year's Conference, I have touched on these identities, but have left it to others, especially Dr Rowell and Dr Rex to make these connections more explicit.

Reformation without end

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Civil Unrest ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Reformation

Reformation without end reinterprets the English Reformation. No one in eighteenth-century England thought that they lived during ‘the Enlightenment’. Instead, they thought that they still faced the religious, intellectual and political problems unleashed by the Reformation, which began in the sixteenth century. They faced those problems, though, in the aftermath of two bloody seventeenth-century political and religious revolutions. This book is about the ways the eighteenth-century English debated the causes and consequences of those seventeenth-century revolutions. Those living in post-revolutionary England conceived themselves as living in the midst of the very thing which they thought had caused the revolutions: the Reformation. The reasons for and the legacy of the Reformation remained hotly debated in post-revolutionary England because the religious and political issues it had generated remained unresolved and that irresolution threatened more civil unrest. For this reason, most that got published during the eighteenth century concerned religion. This book looks closely at the careers of four of the eighteenth century’s most important polemical divines, Daniel Waterland, Conyers Middleton, Zachary Grey and William Warburton. It relies on a wide range of manuscript sources, including annotated books and unpublished drafts, to show how eighteenth-century authors crafted and pitched their works.

Bishop-Poets in the Shadow of the Council of Trent: Antonio Sebastiani Minturno and the Poemata Tridentina

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Largaiolli
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Spiritual Values ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
International Conference ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
The Reformation

The atmosphere of the Council of Trent was permeated by literature. Italian bishops at the time of Reformation were acquainted with the most significant humanistic literary culture of the sixteenth century. Antonio Sebastiano Minturno (1500–1574), an Italian bishop who actively attended the last phases of the Council, was author of two treatises on poetics, secular and sacred poems in vernacular (1559, 1561) and Latin poems. The importance of literature in his life can be seen in the network of his intellectual and political relations as well as in the use of poetry and literature in order to assert spiritual values and to represent the main events of his times. In particular, the Poemata Tridentina (1564), a collection of poems about the Council and its protagonists, can be read as a document of his spiritual life and of the catholic perception of the Council itself, since they are one of the rare literary works which explicitly deal with the Council of Trent as main theme. A different version of the paper was presented at the International Conference "More than Luther: The Reformation and the Rise of Pluralism in Europe" (Seventh Annual RefoRC Conference 2017, Wittenberg 10–12 May 2017).

REFORMERS, CONFLICT, AND REVISIONISM: THE REFORMATION IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY HADLEIGH

1999 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN CRAIG
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Town

The cloth-making town of Hadleigh in Suffolk has often been cited in the annals of the English Reformation as a town that early embraced Protestantism apparently effortlessly. This view owes much to John Foxe's famous description of this ‘Universitie of the learned’, yet a closer examination of the surviving evidence from Hadleigh indicates that the Reformation was as bitterly contested here as it was in many another mid-Tudor community. And the nature of the bitter struggle between the advocates of reform and a group of conservatives in the town may have proved so fierce that the energies for further reform under Elizabeth all but dissipated.

THE LIMITS OF POSSIBILITY IN ENGLAND'S LONG REFORMATION

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 1049-1070
Author(s):  
LUCY BATES
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Status ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTInterpretations that solely emphasize either continuity or controversy are found wanting. Historians still question how the English became Protestant, what sort of Protestants they were, and why a civil war dominated by religion occurred over a hundred years after the initial Reformation crisis. They utilize many approaches: from above and below, and with fresh perspectives, from within and without. Yet the precise nature of the relationship of the Reformation, the civil war, the interregnum and the Restoration settlement remains controversial. This review of recent Reformation historiography largely validates the current consensus of a balance of continuity and change, pressure for further reform and begrudging conformity. Yet ultimately it argues that continuity must form the foundation for any interpretation of the Reformation, for controversial or dramatic alterations to the status quo only made sense to contemporaries in the context of what had come before. Challenging ideas, like challenging individuals, did not exist in a vacuum devoid of historical context. The practical limits of possibility, constrained largely by the established norms and procedures, shaped the course of English Reformation. As such, practicality seems a unifying and central theme for current and future investigations of England's long Reformation.

scholarly journals “Sapere audite ...” Melanchthon – sestiende-eeuse humanis en belangrike reformator

2018 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor D'Assonville
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
Philipp Melanchthon ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Reformation History ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

Terwyl Philipp Melanchthon allerweë in wetenskaplike kringe in Wes-Europa sowel as die VSA erkenning geniet vir sy reuse bydrae tot die Reformasie en die Westerse universiteitswese, is hy in sommige dele van die wêreld, ongelukkig ook in Suid-Afrika, taamlik onbekend. Dikwels verdwyn hy in die skadu van Luther en Calvyn. In eie reg was sy bydrae tot die hervorming van die kerk, sowel as die ontwikkeling van geesteswetenskappe en feitlik die volledige spektrum van wetenskappe in sy tyd egter só geweldig groot dat dit moeilik is om nie slegs in die oortreffende trap daarvan te praat nie. In hierdie artikel word doelbewus aandag aan die verhouding tussen sy rol as humanistiese geleerde in die sestiende-eeuse konteks en sy bydrae as kerkhervormer gegee, om sodoende meer insig oor die agtergrond van die komplekse reformasiegeskiedenis te bied. Abstract While Philip Melanchthon enjoys wide acclaim in scientific circles in Western Europe as well as the USA for his tremendous contribution to the Reformation and establishment of Western universities, he is unfortunately relatively unknown in some parts of the world, including South Africa. Often he recedes into the shadow of Luther and Calvin. In his own right his contribution to the sixteenth-century reformation of the church and the development of the Humanities – and in fact close to the entire spectrum of the sciences of his time – was so profound that it is hard not to acclaim him to the superlative degree. In this article, attention is deliberately given to the relationship between his role as humanistic scholar in the sixteenth century context and his contribution as church reformer, in order to provide more clarity on the context of the complexity of church reformation history.

Custom, Common Law, and the Constitution of English Renaissance Literature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Elsky
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
English Renaissance ◽  
Renaissance Literature ◽  
Renaissance Art ◽  
Legal Concept ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Century Literature

Custom, Common Law, and the Constitution of English Renaissance Literature argues that, ironically, custom was a supremely generative literary force for a range of Renaissance writers. Custom took on so much power because of its virtual synonymity with English common law, the increasingly dominant legal system that was also foundational to England’s constitutionalist politics. The strange temporality assigned to legal custom, that is, its purported existence since “time immemorial,” furnished it with a unique and paradoxical capacity—to make new and foreign forms familiar. This monograph shows that during a time when novelty was suspect, even insurrectionary, appeals to the widespread understanding of custom as a legal concept justified a startling array of fictive experiments. This is the first monograph to reveal fully the relationship between Renaissance literature and legal custom. It shows how writers were able to reimagine moments of historical and cultural rupture as continuity by appealing to the powerful belief that English legal custom persisted in the face of conquests by foreign powers. Custom, Common Law, and the Constitution of English Renaissance Literature thus challenges scholarly narratives in which Renaissance art breaks with a past it looks back upon longingly and instead argues that the period viewed its literature as imbued with the aura of the past. In this way, through experiments in rhetoric and form, literature unfolds the processes whereby custom gains its formidable and flexible political power. Custom, a key concept of legal and constitutionalist thought, shaped sixteenth-century literature, while this literature, in turn, transformed custom into an evocative mythopoetic.

Revisionism, the Reformation and the History of English Catholicism

1985 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 394-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Haigh
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political History ◽  
The State ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of

Twenty years ago, when Patrick McGrath was writing Papists and Puritans, it made sense to present the history of Tudor Catholicism in terms of early decline and later heroic recovery. Our understanding of the sixteenth century was then dominated by two books, which seemed to demonstrate revolutions in religion and government that breached all continuities in ecclesiastical and political history. In A. G. Dickens's The English Reformation, an increasingly sophisticated laity, discontented with the moral laxity and spiritual torpor of the late medieval clergy, was shown to have accepted with enthusiasm the break with Rome and the new doctrines of Protestantism. Gentlemen, lawyers, merchants and artisans responded to the energetic evangelism of the early reformers, and abandoned medieval obscurantism. Secular and ecclesiastical politicians espoused reform for their own calculations of expediency or experience of spirituality, and threw the weight of the state behind the new doctrines, while conservatives lacked the commitment and imagination to resist change.

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