Witnessing to the faith: Absolutism and the conscience in John Donne's England

by Shanyn Altman

Overview

This study utilises John Donne’s works concerning the Jacobean Settlement as a contextualised case study to examine a seriously pressing issue in contemporary society: the issue of Catholic loyalism post-1603 and the disputes that thistopic sparked over the matter of conformity.Altman examines Donne’s polemic in line with the vast expanse of literature relating to the pamphlet war and situates Donne’s arguments within a strong contemporary tradition of conformist thought. Within this context, the study argues that Donne articulated a theory of royal absolutism that would have struck home with many contemporaries who, whether Catholic or not, were faced with a regime determined to bring them into conformity. It further contends that the religio-political standpoint represented by Donne was not only fairly obvious to the English state but was also widely accepted by it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781526154859
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Publication date:	07/18/2023
Series:	Politics, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	775 KB

About the Author

Shanyn Altman is a Teaching Fellow in English Literature at the University of Leicester

Table of Contents

Introduction: Situating John Donne within post-Reformation studies

1 Absolutism and the moderation of religion
2 Resistance theory, tyrannicide and the trope of the ‘Evil Jesuit’
3 Volunteerism and self- sovereignty in discourses on martyrdom

Conclusion: John Donne studies and the “Revisionist” paradigm

Index