Stewart Mottram writes on representations of ruin and religious violence across English literature of the long reformation, with particular interests in Edmund Spenser and Andrew Marvell. He has held Leverhulme and AHRC Early Career Fellowships at Aberystwyth and Hull, was appointed to his current post at Hull in 2010, and has also previously taught at the University of Leeds and at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He is author of Empire and Nation in early English Renaissance literature (2008), co-editor of the essay collection, Writing Wales, from the Renaissance to Romanticism (2012), and has published widely on reformation themes in early modern literature, in journals including Spenser Studies and The Seventeenth Century. He is author of the Oxford Bibliographies entry for Andrew Marvell.

This book has much to tell historians and literary scholars about the complexity of attitudes towards iconoclasm and religious violence in the long reformation. Its learning is deep, its moves carefully meditated, and its resolve to wayfare across artificial period boundaries a welcome prompt to students of early modern cultural history.

• Introduction. Ruin and Reformation: The past as prologue 1: Spenser, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the decline of the preacher's plough 2: Wondering at ruins: Vallans, Spenser, and the reformation of St Alban 3: Warriors and ruins: Loyalism, rebellion, and recusancy in Cymbeline's Wales 4: 'Where ruine must reforme?' John Denham's Coopers Hill (1642) 5: Cloistered virtue: Nun Appleton priory and presbyterianism in Marvell's Upon Appleton House (1651) Conclusion

Stewart Mottram writes on representations of ruin and religious violence across English literature of the long reformation, with particular interests in Edmund Spenser and Andrew Marvell. He has held Leverhulme and AHRC Early Career Fellowships at Aberystwyth and Hull, was appointed to his current post at Hull in 2010, and has also previously taught at the University of Leeds and at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He is author of Empire and Nation in early English Renaissance literature (2008), co-editor of the essay collection, Writing Wales, from the Renaissance to Romanticism (2012), and has published widely on reformation themes in early modern literature, in journals including Spenser Studies and The Seventeenth Century. He is author of the Oxford Bibliographies entry for Andrew Marvell.

This book has much to tell historians and literary scholars about the complexity of attitudes towards iconoclasm and religious violence in the long reformation. Its learning is deep, its moves carefully meditated, and its resolve to wayfare across artificial period boundaries a welcome prompt to students of early modern cultural history.

• Introduction. Ruin and Reformation: The past as prologue 1: Spenser, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the decline of the preacher's plough 2: Wondering at ruins: Vallans, Spenser, and the reformation of St Alban 3: Warriors and ruins: Loyalism, rebellion, and recusancy in Cymbeline's Wales 4: 'Where ruine must reforme?' John Denham's Coopers Hill (1642) 5: Cloistered virtue: Nun Appleton priory and presbyterianism in Marvell's Upon Appleton House (1651) Conclusion

Stewart Mottram writes on representations of ruin and religious violence across English literature of the long reformation, with particular interests in Edmund Spenser and Andrew Marvell. He has held Leverhulme and AHRC Early Career Fellowships at Aberystwyth and Hull, was appointed to his current post at Hull in 2010, and has also previously taught at the University of Leeds and at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He is author of Empire and Nation in early English Renaissance literature (2008), co-editor of the essay collection, Writing Wales, from the Renaissance to Romanticism (2012), and has published widely on reformation themes in early modern literature, in journals including Spenser Studies and The Seventeenth Century. He is author of the Oxford Bibliographies entry for Andrew Marvell.

This book has much to tell historians and literary scholars about the complexity of attitudes towards iconoclasm and religious violence in the long reformation. Its learning is deep, its moves carefully meditated, and its resolve to wayfare across artificial period boundaries a welcome prompt to students of early modern cultural history.

• Introduction. Ruin and Reformation: The past as prologue 1: Spenser, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the decline of the preacher's plough 2: Wondering at ruins: Vallans, Spenser, and the reformation of St Alban 3: Warriors and ruins: Loyalism, rebellion, and recusancy in Cymbeline's Wales 4: 'Where ruine must reforme?' John Denham's Coopers Hill (1642) 5: Cloistered virtue: Nun Appleton priory and presbyterianism in Marvell's Upon Appleton House (1651) Conclusion