ABSTRACT
Parts of A.G.Dickens, The English Reformation, were considerably rewritten for the second edition (1989). On the English Bible see also G. Hammond, The Making of the English Bible (Manchester, 1982), and D. Norton, A History of the Bible as Literature, vol. I, From Antiquity to 1700 (Cambridge, 1993). There is much disagreement on the causes and meaning of the English Reformation: see R.O’Day, The Debate on the English Reformation* (London, 1986), and C.Haigh, ed., The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge, 1987), Introduction and ch. I, which challenges A.G.Dickens and the ‘Foxe version’. The characteristics of Puritanism are briefly outlined in P. Collinson, English Puritanism* (London, 1983); his The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559-1625 (Oxford, 1982) is much fuller but very lively and readable. Two works which emphasise the importance and popularity of late medieval Catholicism are J. Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400-1700* (Oxford, 1985), and E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400-c. 1580 (New Haven, 1992). On the Counter-Reformation see J.Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, trans. J.Moiser (London, 1977), with an introduction by J.Bossy. On the impact of the reformed churches in Europe see M.Prestwich, ed., International Calvinism 15411715 (Oxford, 1985). Religious differences in seventeenth-century England are explored in different ways by J.S.McGee, The Godly Man in Stuart England: Anglicans, Puritans and the Two Tables 1620-1670 (New Haven, 1976); N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c. 1590-1640 (Oxford, 1987); and H.Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans (London, 1989, first pub. 1987). J.E.Booty et al, The Godly Kingdom of Tudor England: Great Books of the English Reformation (Wilton, Conn., 1981), provides accounts of the Great Bible, Erasmus’ Paraphrases, the Book of Homilies, and the Book of Common Prayer. See also R.Zim, English Metrical Psalms: Poetry as Praise and Prayer 1535-1601 (Cambridge, 1987). Two very thorough studies of literature and the Reformation are J.N.King, English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (Princeton, 1982), and its sequel, Spenser’s Poetry and the Reformation Tradition (Princeton, 1990). Two idiosyncratic, controversial accounts of the responses of specific poets to religious upheaval are J.Carey, John Donne: Life, Mind and Art (London, 1981) and C.Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (London, 1977). N.H.Keeble, The Literary Culture of Nonconformity in Later Seventeenth-Century England (Leicester, 1987), is a very full and sympathetic account of the later stages of Puritanism.
