Open AccessThe "Honest Style" of Ben Jonson's <i>Epigrams</i> and <i>The Forest</i>
Author(s) -
James P. Crowley
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
renaissance and reformation
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 5
eISSN - 2293-7374
pISSN - 0034-429X
DOI - 10.33137/rr.v32i2.11548
Subject(s) - imprisonment , biography , style (visual arts) , context (archaeology) , literature , art , history , philosophy , law , political science , archaeology
During his imprisonment for the murder of Gabriel Spencer in 1598, Ben Jonson converted to the outlawed Roman Catholic Church, and for the next 12 years made no attempt to conceal his recusant status. Jonson's biography and the historical documents treating conversion and recusancy offer evidence of the importance Jonson placed on codified religion, and provide a distinctly religious context for much of what has been long assumed to be an exclusively classically-based secular ethics operating in his writing.