Political Theologies in Shakespeare's England offers a defining reinterpretation of English political thought in the aftermath of the Reformation. Debora Kuller Shuger focuses not on the tension between Crown and Parliament but on the relation of the sacred to the state. The book examines Measure for Measure, for the issues at the heart of this play also shape the deep structure of English politics in the aftermath of the Reformation.

Censorship and Cultural Sensibility The Regulation of Language in Tudor-Stuart England Debora Shuger "May be the year's most erudite book. . . . A major scholarly achievement, since it bears on the work so many now do."--"Studies in English Literature" "Scrupulously researched, carefully written, argued, and developed, this is one of those books for which it is hard to imagine a mortal author."--Patrick Cheney, "Studies in English Literature" "This is a major work. Shuger deals with the rules of appropriate language use in early modern Europe, making an argument about censorship in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England that is original, surprising, and, in her thorough presentation, entirely plausible."--Katharine Eisaman Maus, University of Virginia "This magisterial work should be considered a basic text of analysts for Tudor-Stuart linguists, historians, and legal scholars."--"History: Review of New Books" "An extremely impressive book, brimming with ideas and erudition, and putting forward an innovative and challenging interpretation which should be of great interest to lawyers as well as literary and social historians."--"Journal of Law and Society" In this study of the reciprocities binding religion, politics, law, and literature, Debora Shuger offers a profoundly new history of early modern English censorship, one that bears centrally on issues still current: the rhetoric of ideological extremism, the use of defamation to ruin political opponents, the grounding of law in theological ethics, and the terrible fragility of public spheres. Starting from the question of why no one prior to the mid-1640s argued for free speech or a free press per se, "Censorship and Cultural Sensibility" surveys the texts against which Tudor-Stuart censorship aimed its biggest guns, which turned out not to be principled dissent but libels, conspiracy fantasies, and hate speech. The book explores the laws that attempted to suppress such material, the cultural values that underwrote this regulation, and, finally, the very different framework of assumptions whose gradual adoption rendered censorship illegitimate. Virtually all substantive law on language concerned defamation, regulating what one could say about other people. Hence Tudor-Stuart laws extended protection only to the person hurt by another's words, never to their speaker. In treating transgressive language as akin to battery, English law differed fundamentally from papal censorship, which construed its target as heresy. There were thus two models of censorship operative in the early modern period, both premised on religious norms, but one concerned primarily with false accusation and libel, the other with false belief and immorality. Shuger investigates the first of these models--the dominant English one--tracing its complex origins in the Roman law of "iniuria" through medieval theological ethics and Continental jurisprudence to its continuities and discontinuities with current U.S. law. In so doing, she enables her reader to grasp how in certain contexts censorship could be understood as safeguarding both charitable community and personal dignitary rights. Debora Shuger is Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of "Political Theologies in Shakespeare's England" and other books. 2006 360 pages 6 x 9 ISBN 978-0-8122-3917-1 Cloth $59.95s 39.00 ISBN 978-0-8122-0334-9 Ebook $59.95s 39.00 World Rights History Short copy: "This is a major work. Shuger deals with the rules of appropriate language use in early modern Europe, making an argument about censorship in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England that is original, surprising, and, in her thorough presentation, entirely plausible."--Katharine Eisaman Maus, University of Virginia

Religion in Tudor England offers readers the prose and the poetry, the theology and the spirituality, the prayers and the polemics, of one of the most important epochs in the making of modern Christianity. Beginning with King Henry VII, the Tudors' reign included the break with Rome and the rise of English Protestantism, a series of religiously inspired revolts, the burnings of nearly three hundred Protestants for heresy under Queen Mary, the executions of scores of Catholics for treason under Queen Elizabeth, and the emergence of the Puritan challenge to the Church of England. Moreover, the English Reformation coincided with the English Renaissance, and the foremost religious thinkers of the age, Catholic as well as Protestant, are also among the greatest of English prose stylists. The sources in this unique anthology, accidentals modernized and accompanied by careful notes and detailed historical, literary, and theological introductions, immerse readers in this world and allow them to explore comprehensively - for the first time - what was lost, what was transformed, and what was preserved in the English Reformation.

Essays by leading historians and literary scholars investigate the role of religion in shaping political, social, and literary forms from the Reformation to the Civil Wars. Individual essays discuss the relationship between religion and culture, and explore how religion informs some of the central texts of English Renaissance literature, including work by Foxe, Hooker, Shakespeare, Donne, Lanyer, and Milton. The collection demonstrates the massive centrality of religion to early modern constructions of gender, subjectivity, and nationhood.

This collection of primary sources from Early Stuart England, compiled by the acclaimed Deborah Shuger, reflects the varieties of religious expression, theological conviction, and spiritual experience of the fascinating and turbulent period in English religious history from 1603-1638. With selections ranging from sermons, devotional bestsellers, and sacred lyrics to ecclesio-political satires and doctrinal controversies, Religion in Early Stuart England, 1603-1638 offers scholars and students key primary sources that will stimulate research and discussion.

First published in 1998 by the University of California Press, The Renaissance Bible skillfully navigates the immense but neglected materials spanning the gap between medieval biblical scholarship and the rise of Higher Criticism. Debora Kuller Shuger powerfully demonstrates the disciplinary fusion of Renaissance biblical scholarship-in which the Bible remained the primary locus for cultural, anthropological, and psychological reflection-against modern historians' penchant for bracketing all things religious when reimagining the Renaissance world. Despite the considerable ground she covers and the interdisciplinary nature of her subject, Shuger never roves. Her penetrating focus casts remarkable light on her subject, especially Renaissance writers' use of the Passion. Their concerns emerge as surprisingly contemporary, inviting the reader to reflect on such relevant topics as selfhood, violence, and gender.

First published in 1998 by the University of California Press, The Renaissance Bible skillfully navigates the immense but neglected materials spanning the gap between medieval biblical scholarship and the rise of Higher Criticism. Debora Kuller Shuger powerfully demonstrates the disciplinary fusion of Renaissance biblical scholarship - in which the Bible remained the primary locus for cultural, anthropological, and psychological reflection - against modern historians' penchant for bracketing all things religious when reimagining the Renaissance world. Despite the considerable ground she covers and the interdisciplinary nature of her subject, Shuger never roves. Her penetrating focus casts remarkable light on her subject, especially Renaissance writers' use of the Passion. Their concerns emerge as surprisingly contemporary, inviting the reader to reflect on such relevant topics as selfhood, violence, and gender.

These essays by leading historians and literary scholars investigate the role of religion in shaping political, social and literary forms, and their reciprocal role in shaping early modern religion, from the Reformation to the Civil Wars. Reflecting and rethinking the insights of new historicism and cultural studies, individual essays take up various aspects of the productive, if tense, relation between Tudor-Stuart Christianity and culture, and explore how religion informs some of the central texts of English Renaissance literature: the vernacular Bible, Foxe's Acts and Monuments, Hooker's Laws, Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, the poems of John Donne, Amelia Lanyer and John Milton. The collection demonstrates the centrality of religion to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, and its influence on early modern constructions of gender, subjectivity and nationhood.