Catholic Culture in Early Modern England - by Ronald Corthell & Frances E Dolan & Christopher Highley & Arthur F Marotti (Hardcover)

About the Book

Marotti analyzes some of the rhetorical and imaginative means by which the Catholic minority and the Protestant majority defined themselves and their religious and political antagonists in early modern England.

Book Synopsis

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 England makes an important contribution to the ongoing project of historians and literary scholars to rewrite the cultural history of post-Reformation English Catholicism.

Review Quotes

"As a whole, the text provides overwhelming evidence of a highly complex recusant Catholic culture surviving in England. Engaging a broad range of critical perspectives, the collection offers a particularly strong reconstruction of both the many essential roles of highly educated Catholic women and the multiple international Catholic networks enjoyed and engaged by English recusants at home and in exile." --Early Modern Literary Studies

"This volume makes clear . . . that the recovery of the stray and sparse bric-a-brac of contemporary Catholic culture is not cultural or literary antiquarianism. It may not be clear at first how such objects (buildings, letters, spiritual and imaginative writings of various kinds, relics, vestments, etc.) fit into an overall account of post-Reformation Catholicism in England, but it is evident enough that explaining how they were created and how they survived tells us a great deal about English Catholics' self-image, often in ways that cannot be recovered from other sources." --Modern Philology

" . . . a solid collection of essays that highlight the creative innovations and adaptations some English Catholics engaged in to maintain a sense of Catholic identity and community once the public organisation and sacramental structure of the English Church was no longer tied to Rome." --Journal of Ecclesiastical History

"Catholic Culture in Early Modern England explores various symbolic expressions of Catholic culture in post-Reformation England, challenging the conventional narrative that treats the Reformation as an all-encompassing and wholly favorable change in English religious history." --Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

"'Banished, ' the obsessive refrain in Romero's conversation with the Friar, could serve as motto for this collection of essays. When the Catholic community was deprived of its ancient rituals and shrines, some found strengths in interior spaces in England, like Sir Thomas Tresham's Triangular Lodge, or in relics of ancient and recent English martyrs; others, scattered in colleges and convents abroad, transcribed patristic and contemporary theological texts . . . a richly incarnational culture that is imaginatively captured in this important book." --Renaissance Quarterly

"In their introduction to this fascinating and stimulating collection of essays, Ronald Corthell, Frances Dolan, Christopher Highley, and Arthur Marotti locate their volume within an ongoing scholarly reassessment of the role of Catholicism in post-Reformation England, and of English Catholicism in relation to continental and archipelagic religious practices. . . . Overall, this wide-ranging and knowledgeable array of essays not only is a significant addition to the scholarly literature on its own account but should also do much to open up a diverse area to further research." --Journal of British Studies

"The anthology, like the majority of the essays themselves, judiciously avoids over-generalisation. In all its breathless eclecticism, this book is a stimulating and provocative contribution to the ongoing surge of early modern Catholicism." --Review of English Studies

"The editors of this collection, who are leading figures in early-modern Catholic studies, have brought together a superb and wide-ranging group of essays. 'Culture' for this collection means writing, but also relics, interior decoration, and embroidery, 'England' is more a category up for analysis than firm demarcation--geographic, linguistic, or otherwise--as evinced in the book's reach into Latin literatures, international religious politics, and European Catholicisms. The result is a book that moves in a number of promising directions for research in the burgeoning field of early-modern Catholicism." --The Catholic Historical Review

"This collection makes a turning point in English Catholic studies, enriching our sense of early modern English Catholicism--and the conflicts embedded in an ongoing debate over the nature of English national identity. Their meticulous research, flexible thinking, and lucidity provide insight into a period that cannot be understood apart from its own profound and informed interest in religious experience." --1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

"This volume proves that their faith and that of the neighbors and coreligionists throughout England was more than strong enough to resist the attempts to impose uniformity in religious observance. Whether considering needlework, building, tombs, or writing, they created a distinctive culture that endured across the most troubled times in England's religious history. The material remains of this culture in the face of adversity impressed those who sought to clear out the dark corners of the land in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and still impresses a confirmed Protestant such as the present reviewer." --The Sixteenth Century Journal

About the Author

Ronald Corthell is chair of the department of English at Kent State University.