Catholic Culture in Early Modern England [Paperback]

This collection of essays explores the survival of Catholic culture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England—a time of Protestant domination and sometimes persecution. Contributors examine not only devotional, political, autobiographical, and other written texts, but also material objects such as church vestments, architecture, and symbolic spaces. Among the topics discussed in this volume are the influence of Latin culture on Catholic women, Marian devotion, the activities of Catholics in continental seminaries and convents, the international context of English Catholicism, and the influential role of women as maintainers of Catholic culture in a hostile religious and political environment.

 

Catholic Culture in Early Modern Englandmakes an important contribution to the ongoing project of historians and literary scholars to rewrite the cultural history of post-Reformation English Catholicism.

 

“This collection contains cutting-edge research on a topic that has, until recently, been shockingly unrecognized and under-studied in the academic mainstream. This is a timely publication and one bound to prove a key point of reference in the future. “ —Alison Shell, University of Durham

 

“In recent years, English Catholicism has emerged as one of the most richly provocative and productive veins of scholarship and critical inquiry in Early Modern studies.Catholic Culture in Early Modern Englandshows why this is so. The editors have assembled a well-balanced and wide-ranging collection of essays that impressively demonstrates how the question of what counts as English Catholic experience opens up fresh perspectives on the nature and scope of confessional and political identity and, more broadly, on the meaning ofcultureitself in relation to the diaspora that left its mark not only on early modern religious and social space but al³&