Disciplinary measures from the metrical psalms to Milton

This title studies the relationship between English poetry and church discipline in four carefully chosen bodies of poetry written between the Reformation and the death of John Milton.

Its primary goal is to fill a gap in the field of Protestant poetics, which has never produced a study focused on the way in which poetry participates in and reflects on the post-Reformation English Church's attempts to govern conduct.

Its secondary goal is to revise the understandings of discipline which social theorists and historians have offered, and which literary critics have largely accepted.