The Sacred and Profane in English Renaissance Literature

This collection of thirteen original essays addresses how properly to define the intersection between the sacred and profane in early modern English literature.

Growing out of recent work of church historians and the renewed interest in our own time to questions of how the religious and secular realms overlap, this volume defines anew the tension between the sacred and profane in Renaissance England.

These essays cover a variety of works published in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, as well as a variety of genres, from travelogues revealing early Tudor reactions to Rome, to ecclesiastical apparel on the English stage, plays by Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Webster, and poetic works by Sidney, Southwell, Spenser, Donne, Herbert, Fuller, and Milton.The collective discussion enables readers to move beyond simplistic categories whereby the sacred and profane - and sacred and profane literature - occupied different spheres, were produced by different writers, and spoke to different audiences.

Mary A. Papazian is Professor of English and Provost at Lehman College, CUNY.