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St Francis and Cultural Memory explores central aspects of English national, spiritual, and broader cultural identity through a detailed yet accessible analysis of a familiar figure: the Franciscan Friar. It covers more than four hundred years of cultural history, from the late fourteenth to the late eighteenth centuries.
List of contents
- Introduction: The Franciscans in Utopia
- Chapter 1: King Richard III and the Lost World of the English Franciscans
- Chapter 2: 'The Father of English Poetry': Catholicism, Nostalgia, and John Dryden's 'Vision of God's Plenty'
- Chapter 3: Friar Huberd, Saint Francis, and the Observance of Gospel Perfection
- Chapter 4: From Medieval to Early-Modern England: Sir Thomas Malory and William Shakespeare
- Chapter 5: Shakespeare and the Franciscans
- Chapter 6: William Hogarth's The Roast Beed of Old England and the Return of the Catholic Repressed
- Chapter 7: 'He is in the habit of a Franciscan': Sir Francis Dashwood, Cosmopolitan anti-Catholicism, and the Gothic
- Chapter 8: 'This demon in the garb of a monk': Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, and the Gothic Reception of Shakespeare's Franciscans
About the author
David Salter teaches medieval and Renaissance English literature at the University of Edinburgh. His research covers a number of different historical periods and literary and artistic forms, although the recurring theme that unites his diverse interests is the relationship between religion and literature, and in particular the representation of sainthood. He is the author of
Holy and Noble Beasts: Encounters with Animals in Medieval Literature (D. S. Brewer, 2001).
Summary
St Francis and Cultural Memory explores central aspects of English national, spiritual, and broader cultural identity through a detailed yet accessible analysis of a familiar figure: the Franciscan Friar. It covers more than four hundred years of cultural history, from the late fourteenth to the late eighteenth centuries.
