The English Sermon Revised : Religion, Literature and History, 1600-1750

This volume of essays reassesses and reasserts the centrality of preaching in early modern English culture.

Showcasing the work of establised experts and scholars in the fields of English literature, history and religious studies, it offers a retrospective review of how sermons have figured in past scholarship and teaching, and points to new ways to study sermons as literary artefact and historical evidence. Sermons have, until recently, been treated by literary scholars merely as specimens of Renaissance prose, while historians have unreflectively plundered them for historical evidence.

This interdisciplinary group of contributors demonstrate the pertinence of sermons to a new generation of Renaissance literary studies. The collection is designed to support innovation on undergraduate syllabi and to encourage advanced research by scholars in literature, history, and theology.