The Drama of Dissent

The Radical Poetics of Nonconformity, 1380-1590

296 pp., 6 x 9

  • Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-9818-5
    Published: January 2011
  • E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4696-4782-1
    Published: July 2018
  • E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-8174-8
    Published: July 2018

Studies in Religion

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This study examines the complex relationship between theological conviction and artistic expression among a diverse group of religious dissidents. Kendall argues that there existed a distinctly radical tradition of dissent poetics whose presence may be discerned among the popularizers of Wycliffite ideas, the Edwardian hot gospelers, and the Elizabethan Puritans. These religious reformers challenged the mainstream of literary thought in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Originally published in 1986.

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Reviews

"An interesting and effective contribution to the poetics of dissent. . . . This book shows the centrality of theatrical ideas and metaphors to extremist religious writers of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance."--David Bevington

"Kendall rightly argues for the continuity of a native literary tradition . . . into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, notably in the plain-style writings of early Protestants and later Puritans."--John N. King, Bates College