The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Popular Culture

by Gary Waller

Overview

This book was first published in 2011. The Virgin Mary was one of the most powerful images of the Middle Ages, central to people's experience of Christianity. During the Reformation, however, many images of the Virgin were destroyed, as Protestantism rejected the way the medieval Church over-valued and sexualized Mary. Although increasingly marginalized in Protestant thought and practice, her traces and surprising transformations continued to haunt early modern England. Combining historical analysis and contemporary theory, including issues raised by psychoanalysis and feminist theology, Gary Waller examines the literature, theology and popular culture associated with Mary in the transition between late medieval and early modern England. He contrasts a variety of pre-Reformation texts and events, including popular mariology, poetry, tales, drama, pilgrimage and the emerging 'New Learning', with later sixteenth-century ruins, songs, ballads, Petrarchan poetry, the works of Shakespeare and other texts where the Virgin's presence or influence, sometimes surprisingly, can be found.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780511862182
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/20/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	452 KB

About the Author

Gary Waller is Professor of Literature, Cultural Studies and Theater at Purchase College, State University of New York.

Table of Contents

Preface; 1. 1538 and after: the Virgin Mary in the century of iconoclasm; Part I. The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval Culture to 1538: 2. The sexualization of the Virgin in the late Middle Ages; 3. The Virgin's body in late medieval poetry, romance, and drama; 4. Walsingham or Falsingham, Woolpit or Foulpit? Marian shrines and pilgrimage before the Dissolution; Part II. Fades, Traces: Transformations of the Virgin in Early Modern England: 5. Fades: Elizabethan ruins, tunes, ballads, poems; 6. Traces: English Petrarchism and the veneration of the Virgin; 7. Traces: Shakespeare and the Virgin: All's Well That Ends Well, Pericles, and The Winter's Tale; 8. Multiple Madonnas: traces and transformations in the seventeenth century and beyond; Works cited; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Waller employs complex psychoanalytic concepts that are both thought-provoking and clearly explained."
Holly Crawford Pickett, Washington and Lee University

From the Publisher