by Vanita Neelakanta
University of Delaware Press, 2019
Cloth: 978-1-64453-012-2 | eISBN: 978-1-64453-014-6 | Paper: 978-1-64453-013-9
Library of Congress Classification PR418.J47N44 2019
Dewey Decimal Classification 820.93583305

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
This compelling book explores sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English retellings of the Roman siege of Jerusalem and the way they informed and were informed by religious and political developments. The siege featured prominently in many early modern English sermons, ballads, plays, histories, and pamphlets, functioning as a touchstone for writers who sought to locate their own national drama of civil and religious tumult within a larger biblical and post-biblical context. Reformed England identified with besieged Jerusalem, establishing an equivalency between the Protestant church and the ancient Jewish nation but exposing fears that a displeased God could destroy his beloved nation. As print culture grew, secular interpretations of the siege ran alongside once-dominant providentialist narratives and spoke to the political anxieties in England as it was beginning to fashion a conception of itself as a nation.

Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.