The English Reformation produced a vibrant literature, which entertained and consoled readers and audiences, and attempted to influence the direction of religious change. Scholars long overlooked this literature because they clung to assumptions of canon-formation by which the medieval poet Chaucer and his imitators were thought to lead seamlessly to the Italianate aesthetic standards of the 1570s and the careers of Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, and William Shakespeare during the reign of Elizabeth I (r. 1558\u20131603). The field of \u201cEnglish Renaissance Literature\u201d still to some degree neglects the Reformation, despite recognizing a \u201creligious turn\u201d in the study of Shakespeare\u2019s plays. This subject encompasses religious literature produced prior to Elizabeth\u2019s reign, as well as Elizabethan and early Stuart religious writing. The Protestant literary tradition which flourished into the 17th century in the poetry of George Herbert and John Milton is rooted in English biblical translation and in the creative poetry and prose produced during the reigns of Tudor monarchs, especially Henry VIII (r. 1509\u20131547), who broke from the Catholic Church, and Edward VI (r. 1547\u20131553), whose government instituted a radical Protestant reformation. English Reformation authors experimented with a large variety of genres and forms, in verse and prose, in order to counsel those in power or influence public opinion. Allegories, ballads, beast fables, biblical paraphrases, comedies, courtly and popular interludes, dialogues, epistles, examinations and trial records, flytings, historical chronicles, liturgical and devotional writing, martyrologies, millennial prophecies, morality plays, orations, parables, polemics and argumentative writing, proverbs, satires, sermons, theological treatises, tragedies, and more circulated as manuscripts and printed books well into the Stuart era (1603\u20131714). This material drew upon medieval antecedents while it simultaneously incorporated continental ideas. When Mary I (r. 1553\u20131558) reversed the religious policies of her father and brother, Catholic authors used the written word to solidify the return to orthodoxy. Under the Protestant rule of Mary\u2019s half-sister, Elizabeth, English Catholics produced controversial poetry, historical writing, martyrologies, and devotional material. Apologists for successive Tudor monarchs wrote in Latin and English to justify royal policies. As those policies shifted across the reigns of Henry VIII and his successors, Protestant as well as Catholic authors who found themselves on the wrong side produced illicit literature on underground presses or in secret scriptoria, or they smuggled such writing to England from the relative safety of continental exile. Scholars examine the history of books and of reading in order to understand how this literature was produced and consumed. See the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation article \u201cEnglish Reformation.\u201d<\/p>","DOI":"10.1093\/obo\/9780199846719-0184","type":"reference-entry","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,5,25]],"date-time":"2022-05-25T08:10:46Z","timestamp":1653466246000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["English Reformation Literature"],"prefix":"10.1093","member":"286","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,5,26]]},"container-title":["British and Irish Literature"],"original-title":["English Reformation Literature"],"language":"en","deposited":{"date-parts":[[2022,5,25]],"date-time":"2022-05-25T08:10:47Z","timestamp":1653466247000},"score":17.578579,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/oxfordbibliographies.com\/view\/document\/obo-9780199846719\/obo-9780199846719-0184.xml"}},"issued":{"date-parts":[[2022,5,26]]},"ISBN":["9780199846719"],"references-count":0,"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/obo\/9780199846719-0184","published":{"date-parts":[[2022,5,26]]}},{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,24]],"date-time":"2024-07-24T00:24:17Z","timestamp":1721780657479},"reference-count":0,"publisher":"Oxford University Press","isbn-type":[{"value":"9780199846719","type":"electronic"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"abstract":"
The Middle English period extends from approximately 1100\u20131150 to 1450\u20131500. The term \u201cMiddle English\u201d was borrowed from historical linguistics, which divides English into three phases: Old English, with its highly inflected grammar; Modern English, where only vestigial inflections remain; and Middle English, which witnessed the change. Thus, the Middle English period (and its literature) has more often been defined by its transitional status than by its intrinsic features; it is difficult to make valid generalizations about texts written over a period of four centuries. The most common approach, therefore, has been to subdivide the corpus into an early and a late period, with 1350 as watershed. Early Middle English texts do not form a unified literary tradition; works do not frequently reference one another, they do not use a uniform style, and they are not concerned with the same topics. One reason for this is the Norman Conquest. Before 1066, English had enjoyed authorized status as the language of record for government and major institutions. After the Battle of Hastings, this role was filled by Latin and Anglo-Norman French. Written English was still cultivated in regional centers, but it did not return to official status until 1362, when the Statute of Pleading made English the language of the law courts. In the twelfth century, more literary patrons commissioned works in French than English; Anglo-Norman literature flourished, culminating in works such as the Lais of Marie de France and Thomas of Britain\u2019s Tristan (both c. 1160). The situation changed in the thirteenth century, with important Middle English texts being produced: La\u021damon\u2019s Brut (c. c.1200); The Owl and the Nightingale (c. 1250); verse romances such as King Horn, Havelok the Dane, and Sir Orfeo (c. 1250\u20131300); and religious and secular lyrics (from c. 1225). In the late Middle English period, starting in the 1360s, English reestablished itself as the dominant literary language. In addition to Geoffrey Chaucer, other notable authors include the anonymous poet of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl, William Langland, John Gower, and Julian of Norwich. In the post-Chaucerian period of 1400 to 1500, major figures include John Lydgate, Margery Kempe, Sir Thomas Malory, and William Caxton. In addition to the chronological approach, other ways to analyze Middle English literature include focusing on notable authors, verse forms, genres, or themes, or by using a particular theoretical lens.<\/p>","DOI":"10.1093\/obo\/9780199846719-0206","type":"reference-entry","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,23]],"date-time":"2024-07-23T07:07:22Z","timestamp":1721718442000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Middle English Literature"],"prefix":"10.1093","author":[{"given":"Paul","family":"Battles","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]}],"member":"286","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,24]]},"container-title":["British and Irish Literature"],"original-title":["Middle English Literature"],"language":"en","deposited":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,23]],"date-time":"2024-07-23T07:07:22Z","timestamp":1721718442000},"score":17.384157,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/oxfordbibliographies.com\/display\/document\/obo-9780199846719\/obo-9780199846719-0206.xml"}},"issued":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,24]]},"ISBN":["9780199846719"],"references-count":0,"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/obo\/9780199846719-0206","published":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,24]]}},{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2022,9,23]],"date-time":"2022-09-23T05:50:55Z","timestamp":1663912255712},"reference-count":0,"publisher":"The Korean Society for Teaching English Literature","issue":"2","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Korean Soc Teaching English Literature"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,31]]},"DOI":"10.19068\/jtel.2021.25.2.05","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,10,12]],"date-time":"2021-10-12T07:33:01Z","timestamp":1634023981000},"page":"113-142","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["English Literature Reading as Literature"],"prefix":"10.19068","volume":"25","author":[{"given":"Goosahng","family":"Yoon","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]}],"member":"8136","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,31]]},"container-title":["The Korean Society for Teaching English Literature"],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2022,9,22]],"date-time":"2022-09-22T02:15:41Z","timestamp":1663812941000},"score":17.253006,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/scholar.kyobobook.co.kr\/article\/detail\/4010028525153"}},"issued":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,31]]},"references-count":0,"journal-issue":{"issue":"2","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,31]]},"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,31]]}},"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.19068\/jtel.2021.25.2.05","ISSN":["1229-2249"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1229-2249","type":"print"}],"published":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,31]]}},{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2022,4,3]],"date-time":"2022-04-03T13:03:54Z","timestamp":1648991034721},"edition-number":"2","reference-count":0,"publisher":"Cambridge University Press","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"DOI":"10.1017\/9781316493779.009","type":"book-chapter","created":{"date-parts":[[2018,5,30]],"date-time":"2018-05-30T10:25:46Z","timestamp":1527675946000},"page":"619-708","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Postcolonial Literature in English"],"prefix":"10.1017","author":[{"given":"Paul","family":"Poplawski","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]}],"member":"56","container-title":["English Literature in Context"],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,26]],"date-time":"2021-08-26T21:27:49Z","timestamp":1630013269000},"score":17.108114,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/highereducation\/books\/english-literature-in-context\/5D37DC73D79D29E0C8E97164739F4127?chapterId=CBO9781316493779A058#contents"}},"issued":{"date-parts":[[null]]},"references-count":0,"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1017\/9781316493779.009"},{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,25]],"date-time":"2025-11-25T03:31:03Z","timestamp":1764041463092,"version":"3.45.0"},"reference-count":0,"publisher":"Oxford University Press","isbn-type":[{"value":"9780199846719","type":"electronic"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"abstract":"
Surviving literature from the Old English period provides few depictions of health care, and there is little definitive information regarding specific healers or the individuals in their care outside of miracle narratives. We are fortunate, however, that extensive collections of remedies do survive, most dating from the tenth and eleventh centuries, and from these much can be discerned. A manuscript compilation of vernacular remedies in British Library MS Royal 12 D XVII includes two books collectively known as Bald\u2019s Leechbook (from the name found in a Latin colophon at the end of the second book) and a third book known as Leechbook III. Another vernacular collection conventionally known as the Lacnunga in British Library MS Harley 585 includes almost two hundred entries with instructions for healing various ailments. In addition to these manuscripts are collections translated from Latin into Old English, most notably the Old English Herbarium or Herbal (often referred to as the Herbarium of Pseudo Apuleius) and the Medicina de Quadrupedibus or Remedies from Animals. These two texts circulated together and survive in four manuscripts dating from the tenth to the twelfth centuries: Bodleian Library MS Hatton 76, British Library MS Harley 585, British Library Cotton MS Vitellius C III, and British Library MS Harley 6258B. Also in the Harley 6258B, straddling the Old and Middle English periods, is an additional text titled the Peri Didaxeon. Beyond these dedicated collections are numerous other vernacular charms and remedies, scattered throughout various manuscripts, sometimes even inscribed in the margins, such as several metrical charms of Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 41. Across these eclectic texts, there is tremendous diversity in healing methods, including herbal remedies, songs and incantations, elaborate rituals, and dietary prescriptions. This wide-ranging body of healing lore assists with an equally vast assortment of problems, encompassing physical ailments and mental conditions as well as challenges ranging from childbirth, snakebites, and dangerous travel to hailstorms, swarming bees, and stolen cattle. Collectively, these remedies provide important insight into how acts of care were accomplished and what care meant for individuals experiencing illness, disability, impairment, fear, and trauma in early medieval England.<\/p>","DOI":"10.1093\/obo\/9780199846719-0221","type":"reference-entry","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,25]],"date-time":"2025-11-25T02:42:41Z","timestamp":1764038561000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Old English Medical Literature"],"prefix":"10.1093","author":[{"given":"Lori","family":"Garner","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]}],"member":"286","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,21]]},"container-title":["British and Irish Literature"],"original-title":["Old English Medical Literature"],"language":"en","deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,25]],"date-time":"2025-11-25T02:42:41Z","timestamp":1764038561000},"score":17.059772,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/oxfordbibliographies.com\/display\/document\/obo-9780199846719\/obo-9780199846719-0221.xml"}},"issued":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,21]]},"ISBN":["9780199846719"],"references-count":0,"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/obo\/9780199846719-0221","published":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,21]]}},{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2022,4,2]],"date-time":"2022-04-02T21:09:23Z","timestamp":1648933763452},"reference-count":0,"publisher":"Informa UK Limited","issue":"1","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["World Literature Written in English"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[1975,4]]},"DOI":"10.1080\/17449857508588340","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2008,7,18]],"date-time":"2008-07-18T14:55:35Z","timestamp":1216392935000},"page":"259-259","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Bibliography of Indo\u2010English literature"],"prefix":"10.1080","volume":"14","member":"301","container-title":["World Literature Written in English"],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"http:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/pdf\/10.1080\/17449857508588340","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2016,11,28]],"date-time":"2016-11-28T13:24:39Z","timestamp":1480339479000},"score":17.047852,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"http:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1080\/17449857508588340"}},"issued":{"date-parts":[[1975,4]]},"references-count":0,"journal-issue":{"issue":"1","published-print":{"date-parts":[[1975,4]]}},"alternative-id":["10.1080\/17449857508588340"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/17449857508588340","ISSN":["0093-1705"],"issn-type":[{"value":"0093-1705","type":"print"}],"published":{"date-parts":[[1975,4]]}},{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,20]],"date-time":"2025-10-20T03:12:20Z","timestamp":1760929940460,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":0,"publisher":"The Korean Society for Teaching English Literature","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"DOI":"10.19068\/jtel","type":"journal","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,20]],"date-time":"2025-10-20T02:44:27Z","timestamp":1760928267000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["The Korean Society for Teaching English Literature"],"prefix":"10.19068","member":"8136","deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,20]],"date-time":"2025-10-20T02:44:27Z","timestamp":1760928267000},"score":16.983578,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/scholar.kyobobook.co.kr\/journal\/detail\/171"}},"short-title":["Korean Soc Teaching English Literature"],"issued":{"date-parts":[[null]]},"references-count":0,"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.19068\/jtel"},{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2024,9,13]],"date-time":"2024-09-13T00:25:55Z","timestamp":1726187155840},"reference-count":0,"publisher":"Bloomsbury Publishing (UK)","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"published-print":{"date-parts":[[1984]]},"DOI":"10.5040\/9781350916487","type":"other","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,2,3]],"date-time":"2023-02-03T13:33:37Z","timestamp":1675431217000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["The Romantic Age in English Literature"],"prefix":"10.5040","member":"2984","container-title":["The Romantic Age in English Literature"],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2023,5,3]],"date-time":"2023-05-03T16:59:33Z","timestamp":1683133173000},"score":16.981956,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.bloomsburyvideolibrary.com\/video?docid=GA-Rom&tocid=GA-Rom_6312194171112"}},"issued":{"date-parts":[[1984]]},"references-count":0,"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.5040\/9781350916487","published":{"date-parts":[[1984]]}},{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2022,6,12]],"date-time":"2022-06-12T23:41:25Z","timestamp":1655077285214},"edition-number":"1","reference-count":0,"publisher":"Foundation Books","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2011,11,5]],"date-time":"2011-11-05T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1320451200000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":793,"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/terms"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2009,9,3]]},"DOI":"10.1017\/upo9788175968851.002","type":"book-chapter","created":{"date-parts":[[2013,6,11]],"date-time":"2013-06-11T04:13:17Z","timestamp":1370923997000},"page":"1-14","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["English Literature"],"prefix":"10.1017","member":"56","container-title":["A Short History of English Literature"],"link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/services\/aop-cambridge-core\/content\/view\/7C657D28F78E9A48A017E916401E2EA0","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2022,6,12]],"date-time":"2022-06-12T23:22:04Z","timestamp":1655076124000},"score":16.890957,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/product\/identifier\/CBO9788175968851A008\/type\/book_part"}},"subtitle":["A Prologue"],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2009,9,3]]},"references-count":0,"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1017\/upo9788175968851.002","published":{"date-parts":[[2009,9,3]]}},{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,8]],"date-time":"2026-01-08T06:01:24Z","timestamp":1767852084110,"version":"3.49.0"},"reference-count":0,"publisher":"The Korean Society for Teaching English Literature","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"DOI":"10.19068\/jtel.","type":"journal","created":{"date-parts":[[2016,6,9]],"date-time":"2016-06-09T21:23:51Z","timestamp":1465507431000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["The Korean Society for Teaching English Literature"],"prefix":"10.19068","member":"8136","deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,8]],"date-time":"2026-01-08T01:02:07Z","timestamp":1767834127000},"score":16.800053,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/scholar.kyobobook.co.kr\/journal\/detail\/171"}},"short-title":["Korean Soc Teaching English Literature"],"issued":{"date-parts":[[null]]},"references-count":0,"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.19068\/jtel.","ISSN":["1229-2249"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1229-2249","type":"print"}]},{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2024,12,11]],"date-time":"2024-12-11T13:10:32Z","timestamp":1733922632131,"version":"3.30.1"},"reference-count":0,"publisher":"Oxford University Press","isbn-type":[{"type":"electronic","value":"9780190201098"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"abstract":"
An integral part of modern life and symbol of modernity, radio resonates throughout 20th- and 21st-century literature. While radio emerges from and operates through a range of wireless technologies including telegraphy, telephony, and the internet, it is as a \u201cone to many\u201d broadcast medium\u2014the first electronic mass medium\u2014that radio has most profoundly impacted the literary imagination and literary production. Writers around the world have incorporated radio\u2019s voices, sounds, technology, and techniques into poetry, plays, and novels. They have written for radio, read their own and others\u2019 work over the airwaves, and hosted and produced broadcast programs. Listening to, participating in, and working on radio spurred writerly interests in heteroglossia, monoglossia, and ventriloquism; mass culture and audiences; the destabilization of temporal, spatial, and subjective boundaries; and the interrelationships of technology, the human body, and the modern sensorium. Even when working within national networks, writers deployed radio\u2019s technology and techniques to challenge as well as affirm racial and imperial boundaries of nationhood, and to call into being local and transnational collectives united across space and time through mass-mediated listening. Radio interviews, readings, commentary, and adaptations have expanded and reconfigured literature\u2019s presence in the world. In turn, literature and print have critically shaped broadcasting\u2019s formats, ethos, and culture.<\/p>\n
Radio and literature are thus intermedial forms that incorporate elements of each other as well as their broader media systems, mechanical and digital. The dynamic relationships among radio, literature, and other media can be understood in terms of remediation, the process by which media transpose and represent the content and properties of other media. Radio\u2019s properties of liveness, immediacy, simultaneity, and intimacy are often perceived to be inherent to the medium. However, they are in fact engineered in response to historically and geographically specific social and political needs, pressures, and imaginations. In remediating radio\u2019s properties, writers participate in the aesthetic and social production of radio\u2019s effects, forms, practices, and relations.<\/p>\n
Literary engagements with radio transmission began with early-20th-century avant-garde poets inspired by wireless telegraphy. With the inauguration of the first station broadcast in 1920, radio radiated through a wider range of literary genres and movements while spawning technologically mediated literary forms such as radio drama, the feature, and the talk. Poetry readings and radio drama emerged within the first years of commercial and public broadcasting. During radio\u2019s so-called \u201cgolden age\u201d from the late 1920s through the 1950s, literary modernism and realism flourished, competed, and resonated with the mass culture, apparatus, infrastructure, and institutions of radio. Writers attained especial prominence in radio broadcasting leading up to and during World War II when governments deployed writers\u2019 craft and reputations in the service of propaganda aimed at their own citizens as well as international and colonial audiences. In the second half of the 20th century through to the present, poets, dramatists, and fiction and political writers have engaged with pirate, Black-oriented, alternative, internet, and other evolving forms of radio.<\/p>","DOI":"10.1093\/acrefore\/9780190201098.013.1388","type":"reference-entry","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,10,22]],"date-time":"2024-10-22T05:37:18Z","timestamp":1729575438000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Radio and English-Language Literature"],"prefix":"10.1093","author":[{"given":"Cheryl","family":"Higashida","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]}],"member":"286","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,10,23]]},"container-title":["Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature"],"original-title":["Radio and English-Language Literature"],"language":"en","deposited":{"date-parts":[[2024,12,10]],"date-time":"2024-12-10T09:11:33Z","timestamp":1733821893000},"score":16.68072,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/oxfordre.com\/literature\/view\/10.1093\/acrefore\/9780190201098.001.0001\/acrefore-9780190201098-e-1388"}},"issued":{"date-parts":[[2024,10,23]]},"ISBN":["9780190201098"],"references-count":0,"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/acrefore\/9780190201098.013.1388","published":{"date-parts":[[2024,10,23]]}},{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2024,8,7]],"date-time":"2024-08-07T00:15:15Z","timestamp":1722989715380},"reference-count":0,"publisher":"The Korean Society for Teaching English Literature","issue":"2","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Korean Soc Teaching English Literature"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2022,8,30]]},"abstract":"