Inventing Polemic Religion, Print, and Literary Culture in Early Modern England

Jesse Lander explores the development of the book in early modern England as both a physical object and a platform for debate and polemic. Wide-ranging in its consideration of texts, from Foxe s Actes and Monuments, Milton s Areopagitica and Hamlet to ephemeral polemical pamphlets from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Inventing Polemic recasts the historical and theological contexts of early modern literature. This study is an important reconsideration of some of the most influential texts of early modern England.

Inventing Polemic examines the ways in which the new technology of print and Reformation polemic together dramatically transformed the literary culture of early modern England. Bringing together important work in two distinct areas, the history of the book and the history of religion, it gives an innovative account of the formation of literary culture in Tudor-Stuart England. Each of the central chapters of the book focuses on specific publishing events: Foxe's Actes and Monuments, the Marprelate pamphlets, the first two quartos of Hamlet, Donne's Pseudo-Martyr and The Anatomy of the World, and Milton's Areopagitica. Lander also considers the way in which subsequent understandings of literature and the literary were shaped by a conscious and conspicuous rejection of polemic. This study is an important reconsideration of some of the most influential texts of early modern England, focusing on their relation to the charged religious environment as it is reflected in and shaped by the products of the emergent book trade.

Introduction: The disorder of books; 1. Foxe's Books of Martyrs: printing and popularizing the Actes and Monuments; 2. Martin Marprelate and the fugitive text; 3. 'Whole Hamlets': Q1, Q2, and the work of distinction; 4. Printing Donne: poetry and polemic in the early seventeenth century; 5. Areopagitica and 'The True Warfaring Christian'; 6. Institutionalizing polemic: the rise and fall of Chelsea College; Epilogue: Polite learning.

Jesse Lander investigates the contexts of print, polemic, and religious debate in Renaissance literature. Wide-ranging in its consideration of literary and polemical texts, this study is an important contribution to the history of the book and the wider political and religious contexts of early modern literature.