Conflicts of Devotion

"Conflicts of Devotion is exceptionally well written and is subtly and persuasively argued, advancing scholarship in such important ways as to change our ways of thinking about the major poets of this period. It will have special value to graduate students and young academics looking for an approach to their own writing." -Gerard Wegemer, University of Dallas

"Cogent, clear and beautifully written, Conflicts of Devotion looks at how early modern English poets and prelates negotiate the threshold of religious identity in a religiously pluralist society. Ranging from Spenser to Southwell, from Cranmer to Crashaw, this book revises our understanding of generic conventions from the pastoral to the metaphysical. While Gibbons does not eschew controversy, he focuses on the strategies of compromise: liturgy, and the poetics that proceed from it, accommodate diverse religious belief in the rituals that give structure to the social world. Conflicts of Devotion provides stunning close readings and sound insights into the ecumenical design of early modern English poetry." -Kimberly Anne Coles, University of Maryland

"Although Daniel Gibbons' Conflicts of Devotion engages with the tensions suggested by his title, he incisively emphasizes the countervailing searches for spiritual unity and community. The argumentation is original and persuasive, the scholarship impeccable, and the prose elegant." -Heather Dubrow, Fordham University

". . . a valuable addition to the work being done on the intersection of literature and religion in early modern literary studies. The book's approach, in contrast to the somewhat indistinct title, is specific and illuminating. . . . Gibbon's approach to the complexities of early modern religious identities and to the nuances of the poets' engagements with the religious controversies and subjects of their day is skillful, generous, and in this reviewer's opinion, exemplary." -Renaissance and Reformation

"The book treads a careful path between emphasizing the religious discord and fragmentation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and producing the kind of ecumenical account of the period that has become more common in recent years and that has tended sometimes to overlook difference in the interest of affirming continuities among those of distinct religious persuasions. Gibbons locates the efforts of a wide range of writers to foster community specifically in the rhetorical techniques that they employ to accommodate difference." -Modern Philology