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The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1988)
Author(s) -
Marshall Peter
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.12
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1468-229X
pISSN - 0018-2648
DOI - 10.1111/1468-229x.12116
Subject(s) - protestantism , scholarship , demise , assertion , theme (computing) , history , sociocultural evolution , sociology , religious studies , anthropology , law , political science , philosophy , computer science , programming language , operating system
The shortest of Collinson's major works, Birthpangs of Protestant England was published near the mid‐point of his scholarly career, and is a challenging, provocative book which helped set a new research agenda for the English Reformation in its opening assertion that it was ‘something which happened in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I’. In a series of linked essays – ‘The Protestant Nation’, ‘The Protestant Town’, ‘The Protestant Family’, ‘Protestant Culture and the Cultural Revolution’, ‘Wars of Religion’ – Collinson subjected broad and canonical themes in the sociocultural history of the Reformation to penetrating review, and previous scholarship on the subjects to sometimes withering critique. The findings were usually (intentionally) paradoxical, identifying (in a manner characteristic of what was later to be termed post‐revisionism) the deep continuities underlying profound social and cultural change. A chapter where this theme is less evident, arguing for the almost total demise of a rich visual culture within later Protestantism, has stimulated particularly fruitful debate. Birthpangs is also notable for marking an evident turn in Collinson's thinking about puritanism, away from the emphasis on consensus so evident in his earlier work and towards a growing stress on its distinctly divisive potential.