This is the first annotated critical edition of works of Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), a writer recognized by literary critics, historians, and theologians as one of the most important figures in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Peter McCullough, a leading expert on religious writing in the early modern period, presents fourteen complete sermons and lectures preached by Andrewes across the whole range of his adult career, from Cambridge in the 1580s to the court of James I and VI in the 1620s. Through a radical reassessment of Andrewes's life, influence, and surviving texts, the editor presents Andrewes as his contemporaries saw, heard, and read him, and as scholars are increasingly recognizing him: one of the most subtle, yet radical critics of mainstream Elizabethan Protestantism, and a literary artist of the highest order. The centuries-old influence of William Laud's authorized edition of Andrewes (1629) is here complicated and contextualized by the full use for the first time of the whole range of Andrewes's works printed before and after his lifetime, as well as manuscript sources. The edition also showcases the aesthetic brilliance of Andrewes's remarkable prose, and suggests new ways for scholars to carry forward the modern literary appreciation of Andrewes famously begun by T. S. Eliot. A full introductory essay sets study of Andrewes on a new footing by placing his works in the context of his life and career, surveying the history of responses to his writings, and summarizing the history of the transmission of his texts. The texts here are edited to high modern critical standards. The exhaustive commentary sets each selection in its historical context, documents Andrewes's myriad sources, glosses important and unfamiliar words and allusions, and translates his frequent quotations from the ancient Biblical languages.

This 1998 study describes the most neglected site of political, religious and literary culture in early modern England: the court pulpits of Elizabeth I and James I. It unites the most fertile strains in early modern British history - the court and religion. Dr McCullough shows work previous to his own underestimated the place of religion in courtly culture, and presents evidence of the competing religious patronage not only of Elizabeth and James but also of Queen Anne, Prince Henry and Prince Charles. The book contextualises the political, religious and literary careers of court preachers such as Lancelot Andrewes, John Donne and William Laud, and presents evidence of the tensions between sermon- and sacrament-centred piety in the established Church period. Additional web resources provide the reader with a definitive calendar of court sermons for the period.

The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon is the first book to survey this rich new field for both students and specialists. It is divided into sections devoted to sermon composition, delivery, and reception; sermons in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; English Sermons, 1500-1660; and English Sermons, 1660-1720.

This is the very first study made in depth and detail of over forty Anglican preachers in the Golden Age of the English Pulpit. There have been individual studies of the sermons of Donne and Andrewes, but none of the metaphysical preachers as a whole. It is the aim of this book to introduce to the reader some of the less familiar preachers: men such as John Hacket and Ralph Brownrig, Calvinist preachers in the metaphysical style such as the Elizabethan Henry Smith (known as silver-tongued for his oratory), or Thomas Adams, who was styled the prose Shakespeare of Puritan theologians. These men, and others, were widely admired in their day and, in many cases, their contemporary popularity challenged that even of Donne. This study provides explanations for the popularity of the metaphysical style, and incidentally proves untenable the stereotype that all the metaphysical preachers were of the Arminian persuasion, since a fair proportion of the group were Calvinists who rejected the Puritan plain style in favor of a metaphysical mode of expression. One explanation of the popularity of this style for a period of some fifty years is that practically every metaphysical divine was also a poet, and that daring imagery, wit, and arcane knowledge were the chief differentia of this style of poetry. Furthermore, James I and Charles I were great admirers of wit and learning. They chose royal chaplains for these qualities: learning made them good apologists, and their wit kept the captive congregations at court intrigued. Equal attention is given to the biographies of the preachers, the themes of their sermons, and the techniques of preaching and sermon construction, with separate chapters on learning and eloquence, wit and imagery, and the uses to which they were put. The result is a full picture of the group of seventeenth-century divines who preached like angels from a cloud.

This study challenges critical assumptions about the role of religion in shaping women's experiences of authorship. Feminist critics have frequently been uncomfortable with the fact that conservative religious beliefs created opportunities for women to write with independent agency. The seventeenth-century Protestant women discussed in this book range across the religio-political and social spectrums and yet all display an affinity with modern feminist theologians. Rather than being victims of a patriarchal gender ideology, Lady Anne Southwell, Anna Trapnel and Lucy Hutchinson, among others, were both active negotiators of gender and active participants in wider theological debates. By placing women's religious writing in a broad theological and socio-political context, Erica Longfellow challenges traditional critical assumptions about the role of gender in shaping religion and politics and the role of women in defining gender and thus influencing religion and politics.