Introduction

Abstract

The twentieth century has been a century of enormous, and deeply disturbing, change. Yet it is the scale rather than the fact, or even the kind, of change that has been so remarkable. The English seventeenth century saw the beginnings of what we recognise as ‘modern’ in a change from the settled world-view and corporate sense of the Middle Ages to scepticism and individualism — a change reflected in the poetry of John Donne, who wrote:

‘Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone; All just supply, and all relation: Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot, For every man alone thinks he hath got To be a phoenix, and that there can be None of that kind, of which he is, but he’.

‘All coherence gone’