Memory and the English Reformation

Alexandra Walsham, Bronwyn Wallace, Ceri Law, Brian Cummings

Research output: Book/ReportBook

Abstract

The dramatic religious revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries involved a battle over social memory. On one side, the Refor- mation repudiated key aspects of medieval commemorative culture; on the other, traditional religion claimed that Protestantism was a religion without memory. This volume shows how religious memory was some- times attacked and extinguished, while at other times rehabilitated in a modified guise. It investigates how new modes of memorialisation were embodied in texts, material objects, images, physical buildings, rituals and bodily gestures. Attentive to the roles played by denial, amnesia and fabrication, it also considers the retrospective processes by which the English Reformation became identified as an historic event. Examining dissident as well as official versions of this story, this richly illustrated, interdisciplinary collection traces how memory of the religious revolution evolved in the two centuries following the Henrician schism, and how the Reformation embedded itself in the early modern cultural imagination.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationCambridge
PublisherCambridge University Press
Number of pages425
ISBN (Electronic)9781108900157
ISBN (Print)9781108829991, 9781108820493
Publication statusPublished - 12 Nov 2020

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