By William J. Bouwsma (Trustee; NHC Fellow, 1983–84; 1984–85) Calvinism has been widely credited–or blamed–for much that is thought to characterize the modern world: for capitalism and modern science, for secularization and democracy, for individualism and utilitarianism. But John Calvin the man has been largely ignored by historians; most of us, if we think of … Continued
By K. J. P. Lowe (NHC Fellow, 2000–01) This well-illustrated book analyses convent culture in sixteenth-century Italy through the medium of three unpublished nuns' chronicles. The book uses a comparative methodology of 'connected differences' to examine the intellectual and imaginative achievement of the nuns, and to investigate how they fashioned and preserved individual and convent … Continued
By Howard Erskine-Hill (NHC Fellow, 1988–89) This is a major study of the relation between poetry and politics in sixteenth and seventeenth-century English literature, focusing in particular on the works of Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Milton, and Dryden. Taking issue with the traditional concept of the political poem and with recent New Historicist criticism, Erskine-Hill argues … Continued