Democratizing Sir Thomas Browne

This study looks afresh at one of the most popular books of the seventeenth century, Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici. Little attention has recently been paid to Browne's once famous style, while his political attitudes have increasingly jarred with current trends in literary criticism. Daniela Havenstein considers hitherto neglected seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century responses to this central work, loosely classified under the term 'imitations', enabling a far more complete understanding of the book and its reception. Browne's style is then reassessed in a fresh approach that combines elements of traditional analysis with carefully developed quantitative methods, and helps complete the comparison between Religio Medici and its imitations.