Theologies Of Language In English Renaissance Literature

Download or read book Theologies of Language in English Renaissance Literature written by James S. Baumlin and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012-05-30 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Redescribing renaissance literature as a battleground of competing “theologies of language,” Baumlin reads Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Donne’s Songs and Sonets, and Milton’s “Lycidas” within a revisionist history of rhetoric: these works, Baumlin argues, mark stages in the Weberian Entzauberung or “disenchantment” of literature, as they move from the word-magic of medieval Catholicism to a puritan-reformed “rhetoric of certitude.” Historians of rhetoric, of Reformation theology, and of renaissance literature will find this a carefully-argued, controversial, ground-breaking study.