James Simpson is a renowned scholar of the English Middle Ages and the Reformation. He is the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University, and the author of many books, including the critically acclaimed Burning to Read.
A subtle and helpful corrective to ahistorical Whiggish accounts of
how we got here, and one that has significant, if largely
unexplored, implications for the present.
*The Spectator*
This is ultimately a hopeful book, and those seeking liberalism’s
death knell or swan song should look elsewhere…This fresh view of
the Reformation will—if Simpson has put his pieces together in the
right order, and I think he has—liberate us…from historical
narratives that have prevailed in the West for over five hundred
years.
*New Criterion*
As Simpson’s book ably demonstrates, by the end of the 17th century
mainstream Protestantism had indeed become one of the champions of
liberalism and a root of modernity…The scope of Simpson’s analysis
is impressive. He moves well beyond the literary realm to provide
deft accounts of historical developments. His sections on the
divisions within Elizabethan Protestantism are particularly
instructive…A major achievement.
*Catholic Herald*
An important and erudite book from a major scholar, one that takes
issue in a critically self-conscious fashion with the way
historical periods have been conventionally formulated, while
arguing that we come to understand the cultural history of
liberalism more clearly by recognizing its continuities with the
religious legacies of medieval culture.
*Australian Book Review*
A breathtaking tour de force of literary and historical analysis
that both confirms the basic pedigree—liberalism stems from the
Reformation—and contradicts it in the novel twist that liberalism
is the misbegotten and unforeseen child of evangelical religion,
born precisely in order to discipline and contain it…An exciting,
even compelling read, and in its breadth and argumentative
brilliance will surely continue to engage scholars in the field for
a long time to come.
*American Historical Review*
Substantial and challenging…It is impossible to encapsulate here
just how compelling and relevant this book is for our troubled
times as Simpson shows that religious liberty was born through the
pain of a post-Reformation world.
*Socialist Review*
One of the best books I have ever read…Will provoke readers to
contemplate the terms of their own faiths (or absence thereof),
while revealing how various histories, when more fully understood,
animate the world we live in today…What a monument (though a homely
and familiar one) of humanist scholarship and cultural
criticism…Magnificent.
*Medieval Review*
Simpson has given us a landmark literary history of the
Reformation, as well as a forgotten history of our liberties. A
rare feat of scholarship and an exhilarating read.
*Sarah Beckwith, author of Shakespeare and the Grammar of
Forgiveness*
An utterly gripping and monumental book, addressing the
seventeenth-century revolutions and their implications for the
Enlightenment and liberal modernity. This is a grand narrative,
with extraordinary scope and range. Permanent Revolution is an
intense, exuberant engagement with the unintended outcomes of the
Reformation.
*David Aers, author of Beyond Reformation?*
A provocative study of the English Reformation's transformation of
literature, theology, and politics…Masterful.
*Choice*
A valuable contribution to describing the birth of Liberalism
through the strife of the Reformation…Simpson has written a real
Gesamtkunstwerk.
*Reformation*
Erudite and fascinating. I learned from every page, not only about
early modernity but about our own liberal predicament.
*Journal of Ecclesiastical History*
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