Early Modern Asceticism : : Literature, Religion, and Austerity in the English Renaissance / / Patrick J. McGrath.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter ACUP Complete eBook-Package 2019
• VerfasserIn: McGrath, Patrick J.,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2019]; ©2019
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (248 p.)

In discussions of the works of Donne, Milton, Marvell, and Bunyan, Early Modern Asceticism shows how conflicting approaches to asceticism animate depictions of sexuality, subjectivity, and embodiment in early modern literature and religion. The book challenges the perception that the Renaissance marks a decisive shift in attitudes towards the body, sex, and the self. In early modernity, self-respect was a Satanic impulse that had to be annihilated – the body was not celebrated, but beaten into subjection – and, feeling circumscribed by sexual desire, ascetics found relief in pain, solitude, and deformity. On the basis of this austerity, Early Modern Asceticism questions the ease with which scholarship often elides the early and the modern.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. John Donne and Asceticism -- 2. A Mask, Asceticism, and Caroline Culture -- 3. The Virgin’s Body and the Natural World in Lycidas -- 4. Upon Appleton House and the Impossibility of Asceticism -- 5. Self-Denial, Monasticism, and The Pilgrim’s Progress -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index