Description
Book SynopsisCaptures the worldviews, concerns, joys, and experiences of people living through the cultural changes in the second half of the sixteenth century and the early seventeenth century, Shakespeare's age.
Elizabethans lived through a time of cultural collapse and rejuvenation as the impacts of globalization, the religious Reformation, economic and scientific revolutions, wars, and religious dissent forced them to reformulate their ideas of God, nation, society and self. This well-written, accessible book depicting how Elizabethans perceived reality and acted on their perceptions illustrates Elizabethan life, offering readers well-told stories about the Elizabethan people and the world around them. It defines the older ideas of pre-Elizabethan culture and shows how they were shattered and replaced by a new culture based on the emergence of individual conscience. The book posits that post-Reformation English culture, emphasizing the internalization of religious certainties,
Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations vii
List of Figures ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
1 Idealized Lives: Speak Nothing but Good of the Dead 11
2 Divine Social and Political Orders 31
3 Roles 59
4 Taming the Natural Child: Preparations for Living 81
5 Seeing the World Anew 97
6 Reimagining England’s Past 125
7 Living Under Divine Providence 149
8 Personal Virtue 171
9 Moral Economies 201
10 Creating the Godly State 235
11 A Generation of Hearers 253
12 Elizabethan Lives Lived 281
Primary Bibliography 305
Secondary Bibliography 325
Index 335
