Telling Tears in the English Renaissance (Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, 70)

Hardcover, As New, still sealed in original shrink-wrap. Part of the Studies in the History of Christian Thought series. 292 pages. "Studies in the History of Christian Traditions is a peer-reviewed book series intended to encourage the study of continuities and discontinuities in the history of Christian thought through monographs dealing with single authors, movements and ideas. In view of the urgent necessity to transcend confessional and language barriers, the series is dedicated to this subject-matter as the common focus for the research of scholars of various religious and national backgrounds." Short description: "Tears and weeping are, at once, human universals and socially-constrained phenomena. This volume explores the interface between those two viewpoints by examining medical literature, sermons, and lyric poetry of the 16th and 17th centuries to see how dominant paradigms regarded who could, who must, and who must not weep. These paradigms shifted in some cases radically, during these centuries. Without a clear understanding of how the Renaissance 'read' tears, it is difficult to avoid using our own preconceptions -- often quite different and very misleading.". …