Muensteraner Monographien zur englischen Literatur / Muenster Monographs on English Literature – serie

The relationship between Latitudinarian moral theology and eighteenth-century literature has been much debated among scholars. However, this issue can only be tackled if the exact objectives of the Latitudinarians’ moral theology are clearly delineated. In doing so, Patrick Müller unveils the intricate connection between the didactic bias of Latitudinarianism and the resurgent interest in didactic literary genres in the first half of the eighteenth century. His study sheds new light on the complex and contradictory reception of the Latitudinarians’ controversial theses in the work of three of the major eighteenth-century novelists: Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, and Oliver Goldsmith.

Why were books considered valuable in the Middle Ages? This study focuses on medieval testaments and donation records from England before 1450 to investigate this question. The primary sources and datable records from before and after the Norman Conquest show that contemporary attitudes can be examined surprisingly closely. Semantic fields as indicators of value help us to discover the material and immaterial values associated with books in the manuscript period, and to trace changes and developments in book ownership and book production. This systematic and statistical analysis of the records shows the varied and multi-facetted nature of medieval books as gifts as seen by givers and recipients.

The patent for coining copper money granted by King George I to the English manufacturer William Wood aroused nationwide protest in Ireland. It led to the publication of Jonathan Swift’s «Drapier’s Letters», in which the Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, attacked both the patent and England’s Irish policy. But this is not the whole story. This annotated edition contains more than 100 pamphlets, declarations, poems, and songs that were published during the dispute. Most of the reproduced texts are extremely rare and have hitherto lain dormant in various libraries. They illustrate that the protest was in fact carried on by the Irish population at large, who regarded the coinage scheme as a severe intrusion into the nation’s circulating cash which threatened to ruin the country’s economy.

Elizabethans saw eloquent language as the mark of the civilized gentleman. At the same time, they believed language to be able to harm, analogous to physical violence. Such concepts of language have important implications for the study of religious controversies of the time, in which the authors often attacked each other harshly via printed language. Employing historical discourse analysis, this study analyses Elizabethan concepts of violent language and shows under which circumstances Elizabethans understood language use as violence. In a second step, the main contributions in one of the most notorious theological controversies of the time, the Marprelate controversy, are analysed in terms of how these concepts of violent language were used as strategies of legitimation and de-legitimation.

For more than 20 years now, the publishing industry has been highly influenced by innovations in digital technology. This is not the first time that technological changes affect the book trade. Both the printing press and industrialized production methods vitally changed the book industry in their time. With a macroscopic, comparative approach, this book looks at the transitional phases of the book of the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries to locate distinctive patterns in the acceptance of new technologies. Using specific book value categories, which shape the acceptance context of innovations in book production, helps us find continuities and discontinuities of these patterns. It also offers a better understanding of current developments in publishing in the digital age.

Did censorship exist before the invention of the printing press and the Index Librorum Prohibitorum? This study examines the attempted suppression of written religious and political dissent in pre-Reformation England, with a focus on legal aspects and historical context. A wide range of instruments was in use to discourage the circulation of unwelcome books. They ranged from drastic measures such as executions and public book burnings to more subtle approaches like erasures and reader warnings. Wycliffite writings were the most obvious target, but civil censorship developed at the same time. Even books of magic make a rare appearance in the records. An interesting aspect is the paradox of censorship: The very act of suppression generated publicity, and many heterodox doctrines are only known from their own condemnation.