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.

• 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.

“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)