Literature, Belief and Knowledge in Early Modern England

Description

The primary aim of Knowing Faith is to uncover the intervention of literary texts and approaches in a wider conversation about religious knowledge: why we need it, how to get there, where to stop, and how to recognise it once it has been attained. Its relative freedom from specialised disciplinary investments allows a literary lens to bring into focus the relatively elusive strands of thinking about belief, knowledge and salvation, probing the particulars of affect implicit in the generalities of doctrine. The essays in this volume collectively probe the dynamic between literary form, religious faith and the process, psychology and ethics of knowing in early modern England. Addressing both the poetics of theological texts and literary treatments of theological matter, they stretch from the Reformation to the early Enlightenment, and cover a variety of themes ranging across religious hermeneutics, rhetoric and controversy, the role of the senses, and the entanglement of justice, ethics and practical theology. The book should appeal to scholars of early modern literature and culture, theologians and historians of religion, and general readers with a broad interest in Renaissance cultures of knowing. Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii Front Matter ....Pages 1-1 Crossroads of Knowledge: Literature and Theology (Subha Mukherji)....Pages 3-36 Front Matter ....Pages 37-37 Erasmus on Literature and Knowledge (Brian Cummings)....Pages 39-61 The Hermeneutics of Richard Hooker’s Defence of the ‘Sensible Excellencie’ of Public Worship (Torrance Kirby)....Pages 63-83 Seeing and Believing: Thomas Traherne’s Poetic Language and the Reading Eye (Jane Partner)....Pages 85-107 Front Matter ....Pages 109-109 The Absence of Epistemology, or Drama and Divinity Before Descartes (Debora K. Shuger)....Pages 111-132 ‘Qui enim securus est, minime securus est’: The Paradox of Securitas in Luther and Beyond (Giles Waller)....Pages 133-151 Allegories of Fanaticism (Ross Lerner)....Pages 153-172 Front Matter ....Pages 173-173 What the Nose Knew: Renaissance Theologies of Smell (Sophie Read)....Pages 175-193 Nosce Teipsum: The Senses of Self-Knowledge in Early Modern England (Elizabeth L. Swann)....Pages 195-214 Front Matter ....Pages 215-215 Knowing and Forgiving (Regina M. Schwartz)....Pages 217-237 How to Do Things with Belief (Ethan H. Shagan)....Pages 239-258 Locke’s Cicero: Between Moral Knowledge and Faith (Tim Stuart-Buttle)....Pages 259-280 Front Matter ....Pages 281-281 Afterword (Rowan Williams)....Pages 283-294 Back Matter ....Pages 295-300