Ben Jonson and Religion

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Searle
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Ben Jonson ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Professional Career ◽  
Religious Conversions ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the complex role played by religion in Jonson’s life; his relationship to the theatre; his works in various genres (plays, poetry, and masques), and in the critical reception of his writings. It considers the biographical evidence surrounding Jonson’s multiple religious conversions within the broader context of recusancy culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. It then examines some of the ways in which religion is represented in his plays and how this influenced and was shaped by the changes in religious culture that characterized Jonson’s lengthy professional career from the 1590s until the 1630s. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the relationship between religion and the theatre as it impacted upon Jonson’s writing and his own instrumentality—as a key cultural player—in redefining that relationship in early modern England.

Afterword

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Brownlee
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
Departure Point ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Relationship

The recent upturn in biblically based films in Anglophone cinema is the departure point for this Afterword reflecting on the Bible’s impact on popular entertainment and literature in early modern England. Providing a survey of the book’s themes, and drawing together the central arguments, the discussion reminds that literary writers not only read and used the Bible in different ways to different ends, but also imbibed and scrutinized dominant interpretative principles and practices in their work. With this in mind, the Afterword outlines the need for further research into the relationship between biblical readings and literary writings in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.

Learning Mingled with Nobility in Shakespeare’s England

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warren Boutcher
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Ben Jonson ◽  
John Marston ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
Samuel Daniel ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The University ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Aristocratic Culture

Chapter 2.3 analyses the English school of Montaigne in the context of the relationship between Renaissance education and the early modern nobility. The Englished Montaigne––translated by John Florio and dramatized by Samuel Daniel, Ben Jonson, John Marston, and others––was introduced as a critic of the tyranny of custom and as a participant in the aristocratic culture of private learning in the late Elizabethan, early Jacobean noble household. Documents discussed range from the paratexts to Florio’s translation and the English text of ‘Of the institution and education of children’ to James Cleland’s work on the same subject and the famous portrait of Lady Anne Clifford. The chapter ends by offering a new perspective on Shakespeare’s use of Florio’s translation in The Tempest: that we should understand it in relation to Samuel Daniel’s use of similar passages in a play staged for the 1605 royal progress to the University of Oxford: The Queenes Arcadia.

‘Love ye therefore the strangers’: immigration and the criminal law in early modern England

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW LOCKWOOD
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Comprehensive Examination ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTThis article offers a comprehensive examination of the relationship between foreign residents and the criminal law in early modern England, as well as an investigation of trials ‘de medietate lingue’, trials with half-English and half-foreign juries, in theory and practice. Because England witnessed both a series of foreign migrations and a series of geo-political crises in the years between 1674 and 1750, the article charts patterns of foreign prosecutions across the period in order to place them in their proper historical context. The article concludes that the protections offered by English law to foreign residents were real and significant and that these protections were especially important at points of geo-political stress.

scholarly journals The Impact of the Netherlandish Landscape Tradition on Poetry and Painting in Early Modern England*

2013 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 866-903 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Trevisan
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Rare Case ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Complex Product ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe relationship between poetry and painting has been one of the most debated issues in the history of criticism. The present article explores this problematic relationship in the context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, taking into account theories of rhetoric, visual perception, and art. It analyzes a rare case in which a specific school of painting directly inspired poetry: in particular, the ways in which the Netherlandish landscape tradition influenced natural descriptions in the poem Poly-Olbion (1612, 1622) by Michael Drayton (1563–1631). Drayton — under the influence of the artistic principles of landscape depiction as explained in Henry Peacham’s art manuals, as well as of direct observation of Dutch and Flemish landscape prints and paintings — successfully managed to render pictorial landscapes into poetry. Through practical examples, this essay will thoroughly demonstrate that rhetoric is capable of emulating pictorial styles in a way that presupposes specialized art-historical knowledge, and that pictorialism can be the complex product as much of poetry and rhetoric as of painting and art-theoretical vocabulary.

The Problem of ‘Atheism’ in Early Modern England

1985 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 135-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Real ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

To speak of ‘atheism’ in the context of early modern England immediately invites confusion, and it is for this reason that I shall place the word in inverted commas throughout this paper. On the one hand, I intend to deal with what a twentieth-century reader might expect ‘atheism’ to imply, namely overt hostility to religion. On the other, I want to consider at some length the profuse writings on ‘atheism’ that survive from the period: in these, as we shall see, the word if often used to describe a much broader range of phenomena, in a manner typical of a genre which often appears frustratingly heightened and rhetorical. Some might argue that this juxtaposition displays—and will encourage—muddled thought. But, on the contrary, I think that it is precisely from such a combination that we stand to learn most. Not only are we likely to discover how contemporaries experienced and responded to the threat of irreligion in the society of their day. In addition, by re-examining the relationship between the real and the exaggerated in their perceptions of such heterodoxy, we may be able to draw broader conclusions about early modern thought.

Summary of Closing Plenary Discussion on ‘Honour and Reputation in Early Modern England’

1996 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 247-248
Author(s):  
Ingrid Tague ◽  
Helen Berry
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Behavioural Change ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
Companionate Marriage ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Over Time

Richard Cust connected honour to his work on political culture and the gentry. He introduced the work of Mervyn James on honour as a framework for thinking about behavioural change over time. He suggested that the new historical approach is a multi-layered rather than a teleological one. Certain speakers had emphasised change rather than continuity over time, while others challenged such an approach. Important new themes had been introduced by the conference speakers, such as the importance of lineage, the impact of the companionate marriage, the relationship between public and private notions of honour and the acceptability of violence as a means of defending or challenging honour. He suggested two related ways of thinking about honour that had not been touched on by any of the speakers: the notion of ‘honesty’ to refer to a godly magistrate following his conscience, and the importance of godliness generally, a pious reputation as key means of establishing one's honour.

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