Prayer, Despair, and Drama: Elizabethan Introspection (Studies in Angelican History)

By Peter Kaufman

"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

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 025202222X
• ISBN13: 9780252022227
• Release Date: May 1996
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 6.0"