| This dissertation examines the devotional works and thought of three influential Protestant writers in sixteenth-century England. Each of them translated complex theological notions of reform into laymen's language during the religious Reformation. At the core of the dissertation is a consideration of popular modes of expressing religious dissent; in order to do this I conducted a detailed examination of three books that have been little-studied despite their being certifiable "best-sellers" in their day: Thomas Becon's The Sicke Manne's Salve, Edward Dering's A Briefe and Necessary Instruction for Householders, and John Norden's A Pensive Man's Practice. As popular preachers, writers, and clergymen whose carters spanned the troubled reigns of four Tudor monarchs, these authors and their best-sellers merit close scrutiny. We will consider each writer's presentation of the new, reformist lay theology and efforts to normalize it for the ordinary English household.;The chapters provide background to popular print and devotional cultures, content, and strategies of expression in each best-seller, as well as analyses of theology, social criticism, pedagogy, homiletics, and literary technique. The dissertation addresses the following questions: What were these writers' primary concerns? What sorts of men, women, households, and commonwealth were they striving to forge? What are the possibilities of, or obstacles to, gauging the breadth of personal and civic absorption of these ideas? What were the twinned roles of literacy and orality in this process? Also, how does the incalculability of some of this data affect assessments of how, and how fast, popular English religious culture was "protestantized"? These three books permit an exploration of the thinking of a significant generation in English Protestantism, and its most popular writers' uses of sixteenth-century mass-media to inculcate their controversial new piety. This dissertation seeks to magnify the salient features of those writers' world of ideas. |
