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Donne and the Politics of Conscience in Early Modern England.(Review)

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From: Renaissance Quarterly
Date: 19981222
Author:Patterson, Annabel

Meg Lota Brown. Leiden and New York: E.J. Brill, 1995. 159 pp. n.p. ISBN: 90-04-19157-8.

During the forty years that John Donne was active as a writer the term "casuistry" gradually changed its meaning. From being a neutral technical term denoting practical theological debate about particular cases of conscience - cases that seemed to require exceptional treatment and to elude general laws and precepts - it began to acquire some of the stigma of sophistical reasoning that now largely governs its usage. The primary reason for this change was, of course, the Reformation, which ...

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