Liturgy and literature making protestant england

Timothy Rosendale0521877741, 9780521877749, 9780511355950

The Book of Common Prayer is one of the most important and influential books in English history, but it has received relatively little attention from literary scholars. This study seeks to remedy this by attending to the prayerbook’s importance in England’s political, intellectual, religious, and literary history. The first half of the book presents extensive analyses of the Book of Common Prayer’s involvement in early modern discourses of nationalism and individualism, and argues that the liturgy sought to engage and textually reconcile these potentially competing cultural impulses. In its second half, Liturgy and Literature traces these tensions in subsequent works by four major authors – Sidney, Shakespeare, Milton, and Hobbes – and contends that they operate within the dialectical parameters laid out in the prayerbook decades earlier. Rosendale’s analyses are supplemented by a brief history of the Book of Common Prayer, and by an appendix which discusses its contents.

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Table of contents :
Cover……Page 1
Half-title……Page 3
Title……Page 5
Copyright……Page 6
Dedication……Page 7
Contents……Page 9
Acknowledgments……Page 10
Note on texts……Page 12
Introduction……Page 13
Prelude/Mattins: through 1549……Page 37
PERFORMING THE NATION……Page 46
LITURGY AND SOCIOPOLITICAL STRUCTURE……Page 52
THE NATIONAL VERNACULAR……Page 72
DISORDER AND SUBJECTIVITY……Page 82
THE INDIVIDUAL VERNACULAR……Page 89
READING THE EUCHARIST IN THE BCP……Page 100
THE REFORMATION AND REPRESENTATION……Page 114
LITURGICAL NEGOTIATIONS……Page 120
Interlude: 1549–1662……Page 129
LITURGY AND LITERATURE……Page 145
SIDNEY AND REDEMPTIVE INTERPRETATION……Page 148
REFORMED POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN SHAKESPEARE’S HISTORIES……Page 159
CHAPTER 4 Revolution and representation……Page 190
MILTON AND THE SUBJECT OF READING……Page 193
READING, FAITH, AND CITIZENSHIP IN HOBBES……Page 204
Postlude/Evensong: 1662–present……Page 213
APPENDIX “THE booke”: The structure and contents of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer……Page 217
Bibliography……Page 234
Index……Page 245