UR Scholarship Repository

Title

[Introduction to] Prayer, Despair, and Drama: Elizabethan Introspection

Authors

Peter Iver Kaufman, University of RichmondFollow

Files

Description

Prayer, Despair, and Drama explores the godly sorrow and pious disease, 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.

ISBN

9780252022227

Publication Date

1996

Publisher

University of illinois Press

City

Chicago

Keywords

Spirituality, Church of England, Calvinism, England, English history, 16th century

School

Jepson School of Leadership Studies

Department

Leadership Studies

Disciplines

Leadership Studies

Comments

Read the introduction to the book by clicking the Download button above.

Recommended Citation

Kaufman, Peter Iver. Prayer, Despair, and Drama: Elizabethan Introspection. Chicago: University of Illinois Press,1996.