Devotional Experience and Erotic Knowledge in the Literary Culture of the English Reformation

This study explores the way Calvinist experientialism provided both a theology and an epistemology in the poetry of five early modern English poets: William Shakespeare, Robert Herrick, John Donne, Fulke Greville, and John Milton. In both official church ecclesiology and informal devotional practice, the Reformation introduced the idea that an individual''s experience of devotion did not only enta...