Stewart Mottram. Ruin and Reformation in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Marvell

Abstract

Stewart Mottram’s engaging new book examines the literary legacy of the dissolution of the monasteries in England and Wales, spanning from the establishment of the national church in 1534 to the disestablishment of state religion by the Cromwell protectorate in 1653. Through a series of close readings of both canonical (Spenser, Shakespeare, and Marvell) and lesser-known (William Vallans and John Denham) sources set within a wide-ranging examination of the moments at which these were composed—and to which they respond—Mottram offers a nuanced reconsideration of the ambivalence with which the ruins of monastic foundations were viewed and meditated upon by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors. Mottram opens with some useful numbers: there were nearly 800 abbeys ruinated across England and Wales in the late 1530s, with a further 90 colleges, 110 religious hospitals, and 2374 chantries and guild chapels suppressed by the Chantries Acts of 1545 and 1547. As well as the...