Legalizing Love

Many recent studies have investigated the significance of early modern marriage, but none consider divorce and the debates it generated, although both were of central importance to the period. This work demonstrates that Protestant debates about divorce following Henry VIII's annulment and subsequent religious break from Rome facilitated England's larger negotiation between medieval and modern values, institutions, and attitudes toward the state. The book considers poems, plays, and courtly and religious literature by More, Sidney, Shakespeare, Jonson, and others to demonstrate how the early modern debate over divorce became a vehicle for exploring both the role of marriage in the state and the freedom of individuals within marriage. Through imagining the possibility of divorce, early modern English writers further explored questions about the individual's relation to God, law, government, and society. "Legalizing Love" fills a gap in scholarly discussions of early modern marriage, and the book is addressed to scholars and researchers in early modern literary studies, history, religious studies, and legal studies.