Prayer, despair, and drama
Subtitle: Elizabethan introspection
By: Peter Iver Kaufman.
Series: Studies in Anglican history
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Urbana
Language: eng
Number of pages: 166
Subjects: Church of England -- Doctrines -- History -- 16th century.; Spirituality -- England -- History -- 16th century.; Calvinism -- England -- History -- 16th century.; Spirituality -- Church of England -- History -- 16th century.; Anglican Communion -- England -- Doctrines -- History -- 16th century.; Great Britain -- History -- Elizabeth, 1558-1603.; England -- Church history -- 16th century.; England -- Intellectual life -- 16th century.
Description: Prayer, Despair, and Drama explores the godly sorrow of Elizabethan Calvinists and finds that what some have characterized as an evangelism of fear functioned more as a kind of religious therapy.

In this major contribution to discussions of the relationship between religion and literature in Elizabethan England, Peter Iver Kaufman argues that the soul-searching and self-scourging typical of late Tudor Calvinism was reflected in the rhetoric of self-loathing then prevalent in sermons, sonnets, and soliloquys. Kaufman shows how this spiritual psychology informs major literary texts including Hamlet, The Faerie Queene, Donne's Holy Sonnets, and other works.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: "Much in prayer"; title: Wretched; title: Hamlet's "kind of fighting"; title: Donne, a conclusion.