Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Review Essay: Linda Woodbridge. Vagrancy, Homelessness, And English Renaissance Literature, Ken Jackson

Quidditas

Linda Woodbridge. Vagrancy, Homelessness, and English Renaissance Literature. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001.

Review Essay: Peter Lindembaum, Changing Landscapes: Anti-Pastoral Sentiment In The English Renaissance, Charles L. Squier

Quidditas

Peter Lindenbaum, Changing Landscapes: Anti-Pastoral Sentiment in the English Renaissance, University of Georgia Press, 1986.

The Problem Of Distinguishing Religious Guilt From Religious Melancholy In The English Renaissance, Noel L. Brann

Quidditas

What is the essential difference between natural melancholy and the guilt-stricken conscience of the sinner? This is the question posed by Ben Jonson (1573-1637) in his poetic plain To Heaven:

Good, and great God, can I not thinke of thee,

But it must, straight, my melancholy bee?

It is interpreted in me disease,

Thaat, laden with my sinnes, I seeke for ease?

Here Jonson points up the perennial quandary of homo religioso. At stake in its solution is not only the health of the body, but also the salvation of the soul. For if spiritual guilt cannot be …