Love's Quarrels
336 pages, 6 x 9
6 b&w illus.
Paperback
Release Date:26 Oct 2018
ISBN:9781625343819
Love's Quarrels
Reading Charity in Early Modern England
By Evan Gurney
University of Massachusetts Press
Early modern English writers often complained that "charity had grown cold," lamenting the dissolution of society's communal bonds. But far from diminishing in scope or influence, charity generated heated debates, animated by social, political, and religious changes that prompted urgent questions about the virtue's powers and functions. Charity was as much a problem as it was a solution, a sure sign of trouble even when invoked on behalf of peace and community.
Love's Quarrels charts charity's complex history from the 1520s to the 1640s and details the ways in which it can be best understood in biblical translations of the early sixteenth century, in Elizabethan polemic and satire, and in the political and religious controversies arriving at the outset of civil war. As key works from Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, and John Milton reveal, "reading charity" was fraught with difficulty as early modern England reconsidered its deepest held convictions in the face of mounting social disruption and spiritual pressure.
Love's Quarrels charts charity's complex history from the 1520s to the 1640s and details the ways in which it can be best understood in biblical translations of the early sixteenth century, in Elizabethan polemic and satire, and in the political and religious controversies arriving at the outset of civil war. As key works from Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, and John Milton reveal, "reading charity" was fraught with difficulty as early modern England reconsidered its deepest held convictions in the face of mounting social disruption and spiritual pressure.
This book is magisterial in its grasp of complex issues and so many different early modern texts. It is an important contribution to early modern studies and is welcome in these profoundly uncharitable times. The scholarship is excellent. The insights superb.'—Achsah Guibbory, author of Returning to John Donne
'This is a wide-ranging and ambitious study, which covers theological and political issues as well as literary texts through the lens of charity. . . . Interesting and informative.'—Sharon Cadman Seelig, author of Autobiography and Gender in Early Modern Literature: Reading Women's Lives, 1600–1680
'Broadly conceived, remarkably detailed, and illuminating in its examples, this study should be the beginning of a new understanding of Renaissance culture.'—Arthur F. Kinney, editor of The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1500–1600
'Love's Quarrels contains much of interest to historians as well as to literary scholars; it is, however, particularly sure-footed and insightful in its handling of poetry and drama.'—Renaissance Quarterly
'Evan A. Gurney's Love's Quarrels: Reading Charity in Early Modern England is the best of these studies and takes as its object charity's role as a principle governing human affairs, as opposed to a set of optional nice things to do. That's a wide-ranging topic, but one that Gurney handles ably.'—Studies in English Literature
'Love's Quarrels is an impressive and illuminating book. Under Gurney's confident guidance, the concept of charity offers a valuable pathway toward an understanding of the shared and competing fantasies of belonging, caring, correcting, and giving that shaped post-Reformation England . . . It deserves a wide and generous audience.'—Milton Quarterly
Evan A. Gurney is assistant professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
