John Donne (21 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, preacher and a major representative of the metaphysical poets of the period. His works are notable for their realistic and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially as compared to that of his contemporaries.
Almost all sermons were written in Latin until the Reformation. This scholarly study describes and analyzes such collections of Latin sermons from the golden age of medieval preaching in England--the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Basing his studies on the extant manuscripts, Siegfried Wenzel analyzes their sermons and occasions. He covers many of the broader late medieval debates on preaching, as well as the attitudes of orthodox preachers to Lollardy.
Study of the rhetorical codes and conventions in terms of which debates were conducted is currently a major area of historical and literary enquiry, and Peter Mack’s Elizabethan Rhetoric provides a wealth of new information about what was taught and how these conventions were exploited in a range of Elizabethan prose texts, personal memoranda, court depositions, sermons and political and religious pamphlets. This important book will be invaluable for all those interested in the culture, literature and political history of the period.
This study looks at the epistemological significance of maternity in early modern England. It reaches beyond the domestic sphere of the rituals of childbirth, midwifery and wet-nursing and the dominant male discourses articulate in early conduct manuals, sermons and obstetrical tracts. In this book maternity is put centre stage relation to the work of Shakespeare.
