Dailey explores the development of English martyr literature through Reformation religious controversy in sixteenth and seventeenth century England.

Between 1535 and 1603, more than 200 English Catholics were executed by the State for treason. Drawing on an extraordinary range of contemporary sources, Anne Dillon examines the ways in which these executions were transformed into acts of martyrdom. Utilizing the reports from the gallows, the Catholic community in England and in exile created a wide range of manuscripts and texts in which they employed the concept of martyrdom for propaganda purposes in continental Europe and for shaping Catholic identity and encouraging recusancy at home. Particularly potent was the derivation of images from these texts which provided visual means of conveying the symbol of the martyr. Through an examination of the work of Richard Verstegan and the martyr murals of the English College in Rome, the book explores the influence of these images on the Counter Reformation Church, the Jesuits, and the political intentions of English Catholics in exile and those of their hosts. The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1535-1603 shows how Verstegan used the English martyrs in his Theatrum crudelitatum of 1587 to rally support from Catholics on the Continent for a Spanish invasion of England to overthrow Elizabeth I and her government. The English martyr was, Anne Dillon argues, as much a construction of international, political rhetoric as it was of English religious and political debate; an international Catholic banner around which Catholic European powers were urged to rally.

The proto-Liberalism of the late seventeenth century in England reverses all the central persuasions of illiberal evangelical religion of the early sixteenth century. Free-will, division of powers, non-literalist Biblical reading, aesthetics, theatricality: each reverses cardinal positions of Lutheran and Calvinist religion. How? Permanent Revolution argues that all revolutions take about 150 years to settle down. In the case of the Reformation in England, the first revolution (what Simpson calls "permanent revolution") was heady and radical. It was also ultimately unsustainable. In about 150 years it produced its opposite, the second Reformation which led to the Enlightenment. In our own times, the author says, liberals make a dangerous mistake when they do not understand that Evangelical fundamentalists descend from the same parent as themselves - the "permanent revolution" of the early Reformation. The core of the book is about the English Reformation and the archive is largely literary. Yet the political and intellectual ramifications exceed the remit of literary studies. The story of the proto-Enlightenment narrated here is not a story of secularist repudiation from outside. Instead, it is primarily a story of transformation and reversal of the Protestant tradition from within. The second Reformation (the one that became the Enlightenment) is less a secularist opponent of the first than its dissident younger sibling, driven and marked, if not scarred, by its older evangelical sibling and competitor.--

This is the bloody chronicle of twenty-four English saints who laid down their lives as a testimony to the truth of the Catholic Faith during the English "Reformation."Champion men and women. Inspiring to the young. Find strength in the heroic lives of those who watched the destruction of the Catholic Faith in their country. Through their death they planted the seed of restoration.

Assessing early modern literature and England’s Long Reformation, this book challenges the notion that the English Reformation ended in the sixteenth century, or even by the seventeenth century. Contributions by literary scholars and historians of religion put these two disciplines in critical conversation with each other, in order to examine a complex, messy, and long-drawn-out process of reformation that continued well beyond the significant political and religious upheavals of the sixteenth century. The aim of this conversation is to generate new perspectives on the constant remaking of the Reformation—or Reformations, as some scholars prefer to characterize the multiple religious upheavals and changes, both Catholic and Protestant—of the early modern period. This interdisciplinary book makes a major contribution to debates about the nature and length of England’s Long Reformation. Early Modern Literature and England’s Long Reformation is essential reading for scholars and students considering the interconnections between literature and religion in the early modern period. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Reformation.

Shakespeare and Emotion devotes sustained attention to the emotions as a novel way of exploring Shakespeare's works in their original contexts. A variety of disciplinary approaches drawn from literary, theatrical, historical, cultural and film studies brings the recent upsurge of interest in affect into conversation with some of the most urgent debates in Shakespeare studies. The volume provides both a comprehensive account of the current state of scholarship and a speculative forum for new research. Its chapters outline some important contexts for understanding Shakespeare's creativity through an emotional lens – from religion, rhetoric, and medicine, to language, acting and Bollywood – and offer a range of case studies which reveal particular emotions at work. Considering emotional and passionate experience as an animating and sometimes alienating force within the plays and poems, the volume highlights the continuing importance of Shakespeare today: for our sense of who we are and who we might become.