Margaret Christian

Sermons at court : politics and religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean preaching

List of figures Introduction and note on texts and sources 1. The architectural settings of Elizabethan and Jacobean court preaching 2. Tudor court preaching and Elizabeth I 3. James I and the apotheosis of court preaching 4. Denmark House and St Jamess: sermons for the Jacobean queen and princes of Wales Appendix Bibliography Index. Supplement on diskette: a calendar of sermons preached at the courts of Elizabeth I and James I.

Academic and Personal Connections to the Text: The Bible as Literature

We seldom discuss it, but I would hazard that much of the energy for the work that we do comes from the personal affinities or grievances we feel toward the texts we read and write about. When one is fueled by a defen sive and indignant loyalty, preparation of a translation or new edition may feel like rescuing a neglected text from misunderstood obscurity. A new historicist or feminist reading of Prosperos speeches in The Tempest may emerge amid feelings of revulsion against early modern Englands imperi alism or patriarchal culture mixed with disappointment in the Shakespeare one trusted and admired as far back as ones adolescence. Most energizing is the exhilaration we feel when we speak to the dead and . . . make the dead speak, as Stephen Greenblatt writes (479). We dont talk much about these feelings, and I am not proposing that we should?but they do pro vide us with at least some of the impetus to do the work that advances our mutual understanding of the literature we study and teach. Many of us recognize that personal connections can similarly energize students, making reading and thinking about a given text easier and more rewarding, and we work hard to foster those connections. The first ques tion students ask when they pick up a text is often something like, Is it about me?, and many of us invest considerable time and energy in con vincing them either that the text is in fact about them (as we do when we help them imaginatively enter its world and identify with its characters) or

Spenser’s Theology: The Sacraments in The Faerie Queene

Abstract These essays represent a variety of approaches to Spenser’s representations of the sacraments. King, Schiavoni and Weatherby ask, ‘What do such passages tell us about Spenser’s religion?’, with King concluding that Spenser was a thorough Calvinist, while Schiavoni argues that his Augustinian position allowed him to keep a foot in both Protestant and Catholic camps. Weatherby, on the other hand, holds that Spenser retained a surprisingly traditional Catholic sacramental understanding. Kaske, Brand and Borris devote less attention to the poet’s doctrinal affiliation: Kaske probes the eucharistic motifs in the account of Cambina’s cup, while Brand develops a reading of the last three cantos of Book One as a ‘sustained allegory of sacramental initiation’ into the true Church. Borris construes the poem’s ‘sacramentalism’ more broadly, examining a number of the poem’s allusions to the Incarnation (the basis of sacramental theology), including many that do not immediately appear to refer to baptism or the eucharist. Gless, reacting against readings that commit Spenser to a particular doctrine of the sacraments, uses various sixteenthcentury theologians’ words as glosses for the poem, establishing the range of readings available to Spenser’s first readers. Finally, Prescott surveys the issues of signs, space, bodies and time-issues which hold relevance for both sacramental debates and Spenser’s allegory.

I knowe not howe to preache : The role of the preacher in Taverner's postils

A sermon is analogous to a dramatic monologue in that it is performed by a preacher. In the case of postils, the editor creates that preacherly role for an actor other than the original author.Taverners postils artfully construct their reader, giving him a role to play which diverges from the character assigned (in the preface) to the actual priests urged to perform the sermon from the pulpit.Where Taverners postils adapt previously printed sermons, some of them widely noticed and controversial, by preachers as different in style and manner as Hugh Latimer and CuthbertTunstall, the postilsI, consistently authoritative and congenial, differs markedly from the I of the original sermons. Because ofTaverners extensive modification of his source sermons, his collection offered a script which enabled every parish to include in its familiar worship routine an English sermon as ordinary orally delivered religious instruction largely consonant with Henrys political and the reformers proselytizing aims.