Brian Cummings is Anniversary Professor at the University of York in the Department of English & Related Literature. He previously taught at Trinity College, Cambridge and the University of Sussex, and has held Visiting Fellowships in California, Munich, and Oxford. From 2009-2012 he held a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship. He is the author of The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (2002) and editor of The Book of Common Prayer: the Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662 (2011), both published by OUP.

a compelling bredth of reference, not merely to the early modern artists and writers who lend their names to the chapters...but to the entire range of classical authors on whom they drew.

• Introduction: Secularization and Identity ; The Mortal Self: Durer and Montaigne ; The Reformed Consicence: Thomas More ; The Writer as Martyr: Cranmer and Foxe ; Public Oathes and Private Selves: More, Foxe, and Shakespeare ; Soliloquy and Secularisation: Shakespeare ; Hamlet's Luck: Shakespeare and the Renaissance Bible ; Freedom, Suicide, and Selfhood: Montaigne, Shakespeare, Donne ; Soft Selves: Adam, Eve, and the Art of Embodiement ; Bibliography

Brian Cummings is Anniversary Professor at the University of York in the Department of English & Related Literature. He previously taught at Trinity College, Cambridge and the University of Sussex, and has held Visiting Fellowships in California, Munich, and Oxford. From 2009-2012 he held a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship. He is the author of The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (2002) and editor of The Book of Common Prayer: the Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662 (2011), both published by OUP.

a compelling bredth of reference, not merely to the early modern artists and writers who lend their names to the chapters...but to the entire range of classical authors on whom they drew.

• Introduction: Secularization and Identity ; The Mortal Self: Durer and Montaigne ; The Reformed Consicence: Thomas More ; The Writer as Martyr: Cranmer and Foxe ; Public Oathes and Private Selves: More, Foxe, and Shakespeare ; Soliloquy and Secularisation: Shakespeare ; Hamlet's Luck: Shakespeare and the Renaissance Bible ; Freedom, Suicide, and Selfhood: Montaigne, Shakespeare, Donne ; Soft Selves: Adam, Eve, and the Art of Embodiement ; Bibliography

Brian Cummings is Anniversary Professor at the University of York in the Department of English & Related Literature. He previously taught at Trinity College, Cambridge and the University of Sussex, and has held Visiting Fellowships in California, Munich, and Oxford. From 2009-2012 he held a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship. He is the author of The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (2002) and editor of The Book of Common Prayer: the Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662 (2011), both published by OUP.

a compelling bredth of reference, not merely to the early modern artists and writers who lend their names to the chapters...but to the entire range of classical authors on whom they drew.

• Introduction: Secularization and Identity ; The Mortal Self: Durer and Montaigne ; The Reformed Consicence: Thomas More ; The Writer as Martyr: Cranmer and Foxe ; Public Oathes and Private Selves: More, Foxe, and Shakespeare ; Soliloquy and Secularisation: Shakespeare ; Hamlet's Luck: Shakespeare and the Renaissance Bible ; Freedom, Suicide, and Selfhood: Montaigne, Shakespeare, Donne ; Soft Selves: Adam, Eve, and the Art of Embodiement ; Bibliography