Early Modern Consolations from More to Milton

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My proposed project seeks to examine the forms and contexts of consolation in early modern England, roughly spanning the period between More's major works and Milton's final poems. Whilethe classical, patristic, and medieval consolatio has been thoroughly examined, a study of consolation as a literary mode encompassing a variety of genres in early modern England remains to be written. Consolations are remarkably diverse in form, ranging from the brevity of a psalm or sonnet to the length of an epic; and while they may employ seemingly universal arguments, they are also considerably topical texts. Steeped in the political controversies of their time, they straddle thepublic and private spheres, and cut across ideological and confessional boundaries. Common to all consolations, too, is a rhetoricity intensely conscious of its own persuasive limits, which accounts for the many discussions of consolation in rhetorics and formularies from Erasmus to Angel Day. The history of literary consolations in early modern England is therefore also the history of its classical reception, moral philosophy, and religious politics, and my project will trace this history through the study of various genres such as philosophical dialogues, verse elegies, psalm paraphrases, devotional meditations, and biblical epics.