The Devil and the Debt Bill: Poverty, Theology and the Self in Rose Thurgood’s ‘a Lecture of Repentance’ (1636–37)
Rose Thurgood’s ‘A Lecture of Repentance’ (1636–37) is the manuscript life account of an impoverished seventeenth-century woman who faced the threat of her own and her children’s starvation. As well as introducing this early yet largely unknown example of female autobiographical writing, I discuss t...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
2003
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| In: |
Literature and theology
Year: 2003, Volume: 17, Issue: 3, Pages: 324-340 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Rose Thurgood’s ‘A Lecture of Repentance’ (1636–37) is the manuscript life account of an impoverished seventeenth-century woman who faced the threat of her own and her children’s starvation. As well as introducing this early yet largely unknown example of female autobiographical writing, I discuss the connections between theological and socio-economic frameworks raised by the text. Calvinist doctrines implied a connection between poverty and reprobation, and Thurgood’s narrative reveals the anxieties generated by such a theological climate for those in a precarious social and economic position. Through drawing on contradictory theological and biblical strands, Thurgood nevertheless ultimately inverts the theological and cultural terms of her exclusion into the basis for a positive dissident identity. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4623 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Literature and theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/litthe/17.3.324 |