Conscience in Early Modern English Literature

This is an examination of how early modern poets attempt to capture the experience of being in the grip of conscience.

Abraham Stoll (Author)

9781108407823, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 1 April 2021

230 pages
22.9 x 15.3 x 1.3 cm, 0.352 kg

'Illuminating in a number of specific ways, and well worth the reader's time for them … bright moments can be found throughout the book. I recommend it happily…' John E. Curran, Jr, Modern Philology

Conscience in Early Modern English Literature describes how poetry, theology, and politics intersect in the early modern conscience. In the wake of the Reformation, theologians attempt to understand how the faculty works, poets attempt to capture the experience of being in its grip, and revolutionaries attempt to assert its authority for political action. The result, Abraham Stoll argues, is a dynamic scene of conscience in England, thick with the energies of salvation and subjectivity, and influential in the public sphere of Civil War politics. Stoll explores how Shakespeare, Spenser, Herbert, and Milton stage the inward experience of conscience. He links these poetic scenes to Luther, Calvin, and English Reformation theology. He also demonstrates how they shape the public discourses of conscience in such places as the toleration debates, among Levellers, and in the prose of Hobbes and Milton. In the literature of the early modern conscience, Protestant subjectivity evolves toward the political subject of modern liberalism.

Introduction: thus conscience
1. Destructuring: Aquinas, Luther, Perkins
2. Spenser's allegorical conscience
3. Con-science in Macbeth
4. Casuistry and antinomianism
5. Public discourses: toleration, revolution, sovereignty
6. Milton's expansive conscience
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Shakespeare studies & criticism [DSGS], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Poetry [DC], Literature & literary studies [D]