Abstract
The theme of happiness is notable by its absence from the otherwise extensive study of the early modern emotions edited by Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe and Mary Floyd Wilson. In fact, in his study of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Douglas Trevor suggests that ‘those souls elected to the quintessence of happiness, eternal salvation, exhibit a non-mirthful relation to the world that indicates moral uprightness and Christian devotion’.2 However, Trevor recognises that while this sadness entails a ‘depress[ion] in spirits’, it does not preclude the experience of religious ecstasy and ‘joyes’.3 Indeed, it is set in stark contrast to the joylessness characteristic of the characters ‘Despair’ and ‘Sansjoy’.4
The enjoyment of God is the joy of our life, and the life of our joy; whatever our fare be, that alone is our chear; how well soever we fare, that alone is our welfare. (Ralph Venning)1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Douglas Trevor, ‘Sadness in The Faerie Queene’ in Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe and Mary Floyd-Wilson (eds), Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 241.
Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Oxford University Press, 1967), 26–7.
Patrick Collinson so describes Paul’s Cross because of its religious and political prominence. Cf. P. Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1988), 20.
For a discussion of the difficulties, see John Corrigan, ‘Introduction: Emotions Research and the Academic Study of Religion’ in John Corrigan (ed.), Religion and Emotion: Approaches and Interpretations (Oxford University Press, 2004), 6, 7–13.
Alec Ryrie, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford University Press, 2013), 83.
Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (New York: Macmillan, 1939), 53, 97.
R.H. Ray, ‘Henshaw, Venning and Bates: Quoters of the Bible or of Herbert?’, George Herbert Journal, 6(1) (1982): 34–5;
R.H. Ray, ‘The Herbert Allusion Book: Allusions to George Herbert in the Seventeenth Century’, Studies in Philology, 83(4) (1986): 50.
John Stachniewski, The Persecutory Imagination: English Puritanism and the Literature of Religious Despair (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 7.
Ethan H. Shagan, The Rule of Moderation: Violence, Religion and the Politics of Restraint in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 151.
Margo Todd, Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order (Cambridge University Press, 1987), 29.
Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians, Erasmus Middleton (trans.), John Prince Fallowes (ed.) (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1979), 127.
Tom Schwanda, Soul Recreation: The Contemplative-Mystical Piety of Puritanism (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2012), 128.
Jean D. Williams, ‘The Puritan Quest for Enjoyment of God: An Analysis of the Theological and Devotional Writings of Puritans in Seventeenth Century England’ (PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, 1997), 345–52.
Elizabeth Clarke, Politics, Religion and the Song of Songs in Seventeenth Century England, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 11–12, 21–3; Williams, ‘Enjoyment’, 358.
D. Booy (ed.), The Notebooks of Nehemiah Wallington, 1618–1654 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 23, 33.
M.M. Knappen (ed.), Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries by Richard Rogers and Samuel Ward (London: SPCK, 1933), 64, 70, 99.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 S. Bryn Roberts
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Roberts, S.B. (2016). ‘Milke and Honey’: Puritan Happiness in the Writings of Robert Bolton, John Norden and Francis Rous. In: Ryrie, A., Schwanda, T. (eds) Puritanism and Emotion in the Early Modern World. Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500–1800. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137490988_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137490988_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-69655-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-49098-8
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)