Pan-Protestant Heroism in Early Modern Europe

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vii

   PDF

2. Introduction: “But One Body”—Early Modern Transnational Protestantism and English Literature

   • Kevin Chovanec

   Pages 1-46

3. The Dutch Revolt and the Pan-Protestant Literary Sphere

   • Kevin Chovanec

   Pages 47-103

4. Henry, Prince of Wales, and Britain’s Lost Renaissance

   • Kevin Chovanec

   Pages 105-161

5. “A League That Shall Not End till Thames and Rhine Leave off to Run”: Dreams of an Anglo-German Protestant Empire

   • Kevin Chovanec

   Pages 163-208

6. Gustavus Adolphus, Circulation, and Liberty as a Heroic Virtue

   • Kevin Chovanec

   Pages 209-259

7. Coda: Oliver Cromwell and the Legacy of Pan-Protestant Heroism

   • Kevin Chovanec

   Pages 261-272

8. Back Matter

   Pages 273-283

   PDF

This book offers the first full study of the challenges posed to an emerging English nationalism that stemmed from the powerful appeal exerted by the leaders of the international Protestant cause. By considering a range of texts, including poetry, plays, pamphlets, and religious writing, the study reads this heroic tradition as a 'connected literary history,' a project shared by Protestants throughout Northern Europe, which opened up both collaboration among writers from these different regions and new possibilities for communal identification. The work’s central claim is that a pan-Protestant literary field existed in the period, which was multilingual, transnational, and ideologically charged. Celebrated leaders such as William of Orange posed a series of questions, especially for English Protestants, over the relationship between English and Protestant identity. In formulating their role as co-religionists, writers often undercut notions of alterity, rendering early modern conceptions of foreignness especially fluid and erasing national borders.
 

• nationalism
• Protestantism
• William of Orange
• Oliver Cromwell
• Northern Europe
• Netherlands
• Germany
• England

• Christian Brothers University, Memphis, USA

  Kevin Chovanec

Kevin Chovanec is an Assistant Professor at Christian Brothers University in Memphis, USA, where he teaches and writes about religious transnationalism and cultural exchange in early modern literature.

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