Literature, Belief and Knowledge in Early Modern England

Subha Mukherji is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Cambridge, UK, Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, and Principal Investigator on the ERC-funded interdisciplinary project, Crossroads of Knowledge in Early Modern England: the Place of Literature. Her publications include Law and Representation in Early Modern Drama (2006), Early Modern Tragicomedy (ed. with Raphael Lyne, 2007), Thinking on Thresholds: The Poetics of Transitive Spaces (ed.) (2011), Fictions of Knowledge: Fact, Evidence, Doubt (ed. with Yota Batsaki and Jan-Melissa Schramm, 2012), and Blind Spots of Knowledge in Shakespeare and his World (ed.) (forthcoming, 2018).  Tim Stuart-Buttle is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Politics at the University of York, UK, and Junior Research Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge. From 2014-17 he was a Research Associate on the Crossroads of Knowledge project at the University of Cambridge. His first monograph, From Moral Theology from Moral Philosophy: Cicero and Visions of Humanity from Locke to Hume, is forthcoming.

“It stands as an important contribution to an emerging body of literary scholarship that is investigating the history of belief with renewed attention. As Rowan Williams’s wide-ranging Afterword intimates, it may also help us to recover some of the foundations of our present-day habits of thought.” (Joseph Ashmore, Modern Language Review, Vol. 116 (1), January, 2021)

• 1. Crossroads of Knowledge: Literature and Theology - Subha Mukherji.- 2. Erasmus on Literature and Knowledge - Brian Cummings.- 3. The Hermeneutics of Richard Hooker’s Defence of the “Sensible Excellencie” of Public Worship’ - W. J. Torrance Kirby.- 4. Seeing and Believing: Thomas Traherne's Poetic Language and the Reading Eye’ - Jane Partner.- 5. The Absence of Epistemology, or Drama and Divinity before Descartes - Debora Shuger.- 6. 'Qui enim securus est, minime securus est': The Paradox of Securitas in Luther and Beyond’ - Giles Waller.- 7. Allegory and Religious Fanaticism: Spenser’s Organs of Divine Might - Ross Lerner.- 8. What the Nose Knew: Renaissance Theologies of Smell - Sophie Read.- 9. Nosce Teipsum: The Senses of Self-knowledge in Early Modern England - Elizabeth L. Swann.- 10. Knowing and Forgiving - Regina Schwarz.- 11. How to Do Things with Belief - Ethan Shagan.- 12. Locke's Cicero: Between Moral Knowledge and Faith- Tim Stuart-Buttle.- 13. Afterword - Rowan Williams.