The Image of Both Churches' : the uses of convention in Tudor polemical literature, 1528-1563

Abstract

This thesis offers a literary analysis of mid-Tudor polemics, texts chiefly valued by historians in the field of Reformation studies. It focuses on the metaphors and imagery which polemicists use to put across their arguments, as well as the writers' manipulations of preexisting literary genres and their opponents' rhetoric. The major findings of this study are that religious and political debates are deeply embedded within literary tropes, the polemicists constantly returning to the analogy of dramatic performance to describe religious practices; and, furthermore, that the binary, antagonistic construction of polemical works ultimately means that the writers are dependent upon their opponents as points of reference.