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The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Popular Culture

Gary Waller author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:13th Sep '12

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The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Popular Culture cover

A 2011 study of how the image of the Virgin Mary was transformed during the Reformation.

Combining historical analysis and contemporary theory, including issues raised by psychoanalysis and feminist theology, this 2011 book examines the literature, theology and popular culture associated with Mary in the transition between late medieval and early modern England.This book was first published in 2011. The Virgin Mary was one of the most powerful images of the Middle Ages, central to people's experience of Christianity. During the Reformation, however, many images of the Virgin were destroyed, as Protestantism rejected the way the medieval Church over-valued and sexualized Mary. Although increasingly marginalized in Protestant thought and practice, her traces and surprising transformations continued to haunt early modern England. Combining historical analysis and contemporary theory, including issues raised by psychoanalysis and feminist theology, Gary Waller examines the literature, theology and popular culture associated with Mary in the transition between late medieval and early modern England. He contrasts a variety of pre-Reformation texts and events, including popular mariology, poetry, tales, drama, pilgrimage and the emerging 'New Learning', with later sixteenth-century ruins, songs, ballads, Petrarchan poetry, the works of Shakespeare and other texts where the Virgin's presence or influence, sometimes surprisingly, can be found.

Review of the hardback: 'There is much food for thought about the cultural presence of the Virgin, and about the emotions and desires involved in three crucial phases of [her] history: the glories and extravagances of late medieval veneration, the violence of Reformation destruction, and her persistence in vestigial or transmuted forms in the decades that followed.' The Times Literary Supplement

ISBN: 9781107407664

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 14mm

Weight: 370g

250 pages