The Literary Culture of the Reformation Grammar and Grace [Paperback]

Brian Cummings examines the place of literature in the Reformation, considering both how arguments about biblical meaning and literary interpretation influenced the new theology, and how developments in theology in turn influenced literary practices. Part One focuses on Northern Europe, reconsidering the relationship between Renaissance humanism (especially Erasmus) and religious ideas (especially Luther). Parts Two and Three examine Tudor and early Stuart England. Part Two describes the rise of vernacular theology and protestant culture in relation to fundamental changes in the understanding of the English language. Part Three studies English religious poetry (including Donne, Herbert, and in an Epilogue, Milton) in the wake of these changes. Bringing together genres and styles of writing which are normally kept apart (poems, sermons, treatises, commentaries), Cummings offers a major re-evaluation of the literary production of this intensely verbal and controversial period.


Note to the Reader
Abbreviations
Prologue: The Reformation and Literary Culture
I. Humanism and Theology in Northern Europe 1512-1527
The Reformation of the Reader
New Grammar and New Theology
Erasmus contra Luther
II. The English Language and the English Reformations
1521-1603
Vernacular Theology
Protestant Culture
III. Literature and the English Reformations 1580-1640
Calvinist and Anti-Calvinist
Recusant Poetry
God's Grammar
Epilogue: Revolutionary English
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Index

. . . A notable contribution to the study of literature and religion in Early Modern England.

--Christianity and Literature