People and Piety : Protestant Devotional Identities in Early Modern England

This compelling collection examines the ‘lived devotion’ of men and women in England’s Long Reformation. Through cutting-edge research, fourteen chapters explore how English piety was at once segregational and social, fixed in principle yet fluid in practice, and where authors worked out their faith in painstaking and sometimes painful ways. -- .

This international and interdisciplinary volume investigates Protestant devotional identities in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Divided into two sections, the book examines the ‘sites’ where these identities were forged – the academy, printing house, household, theatre and prison – and the ‘types’ of texts that expressed them – spiritual autobiographies, religious poetry and writings tied to the ars moriendi – providing a broad analysis of social, material and literary forms of devotion during England’s Long Reformation. Through archival and cutting-edge research, a detailed picture of ‘lived religion’ emerges, which re-evaluates the pietistic acts and attitudes of well-known and recently discovered figures. To those studying and teaching religion and identity in early modern England, and anyone interested in the history of religious self-expression, these chapters offer a rich and rewarding read.