The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Popular Culture

Gary Waller is Professor of Literature, Cultural Studies and Theater at Purchase College, State University of New York.

Review of the hardback: 'There is much food for thought about the cultural presence of the Virgin, and about the emotions and desires involved in three crucial phases of [her] history: the glories and extravagances of late medieval veneration, the violence of Reformation destruction, and her persistence in vestigial or transmuted forms in the decades that followed.' The Times Literary Supplement

• Preface; 1. 1538 and after: the Virgin Mary in the century of iconoclasm; Part I. The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval Culture to 1538: 2. The sexualization of the Virgin in the late Middle Ages; 3. The Virgin's body in late medieval poetry, romance, and drama; 4. Walsingham or Falsingham, Woolpit or Foulpit? Marian shrines and pilgrimage before the Dissolution; Part II. Fades, Traces: Transformations of the Virgin in Early Modern England: 5. Fades: Elizabethan ruins, tunes, ballads, poems; 6. Traces: English Petrarchism and the veneration of the Virgin; 7. Traces: Shakespeare and the Virgin: All's Well That Ends Well, Pericles, and The Winter's Tale; 8. Multiple Madonnas: traces and transformations in the seventeenth century and beyond; Works cited; Index.