Liturgy and Literature in the Making of Protestant England

A study of the Book of Common Prayer's influence on English history and literature.

Timothy Rosendale (Author)

9780521173988, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 3 March 2011

248 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.37 kg

'… an emotional as well as an intellectual experience.' Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society

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.

Introduction
Part I. Prelude/Mattins: through 1549: 1. The Book of Common Prayer and national identity
2. The Book of Common Prayer and individual identity
Part II. Interlude: 1549–1662: 3. Representation and authority in Renaissance literature
4. Revolution and representation
Postscript/Evensong: 1662–present
Appendix: 'THE booke'.

Subject Areas: Church history [HRCC2]