Emotion and the Self in English Renaissance Literature
Reforming Contentment

Unearthing a little-studied Reformation discourse of contentment, this book shows its surprising significance in Renaissance literature.

Paul Joseph Zajac (Author)

9781009271660, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 December 2022

232 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.9 cm, 0.5 kg

'Paul Zajac assembles here a remarkable archive of contentment for the early modern period. His wealth of primary sources, his elegant negotiation of spiritual and political discourses of the self, and his bold analyses of a startling range of dramatic and poetic genres make Emotion and the Self in English Renaissance Literature essential reading in the scholarship on literature, religion, and the history of emotions.' Heather Hirschfeld, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

This book offers the first full-length study of early modern contentment, the emotional and ethical principle that became the gold standard of English Protestant psychology and an abiding concern of English Renaissance literature. Theorists and literary critics have equated contentedness with passivity, stagnation, and resignation. However, this book excavates an early modern understanding of contentment as dynamic, protective, and productive. While this concept has roots in classical and medieval philosophy, contentment became newly significant because of the English Reformation. Reformers explored contentedness as a means to preserve the self and prepare the individual to endure and engage the outside world. Their efforts existed alongside representations and revisions of contentment by authors including Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. By examining Renaissance models of contentment, this book explores alternatives to Calvinist despair, resists scholarly emphasis on negative emotions, and reaffirms the value of formal concerns to studies of literature, religion, and affect.

Introduction
1. Constructing contentment in Reformation England
2. Romancing contentment: sex, suffering, and the passions in Sidney's Arcadias
3. Fashioning contentment: ethics, emotion, and literary mode in Spenser's poetry
4. Performing contentment: communal affect and passionate disconnect in Shakespeare's As You Like It and Othello
5. Losing contentment: Affect, environment, and empire in Milton's Paradise Lost
Conclusion: regaining contentment?

Subject Areas: Theology [HRLB], Shakespeare studies & criticism [DSGS], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]