Love's Quarrels

"This book is magisterial in its grasp of complex issues and so many different early modern texts. It is an important contribution to early modern studies and is welcome in these profoundly uncharitable times. The scholarship is excellent. The insights superb."—Achsah Guibbory, author of Returning to John Donne

"This is a wide-ranging and ambitious study, which covers theological and political issues as well as literary texts through the lens of charity. . . . Interesting and informative."—Sharon Cadman Seelig, author of Autobiography and Gender in Early Modern Literature: Reading Women's Lives, 1600–1680

"Broadly conceived, remarkably detailed, and illuminating in its examples, this study should be the beginning of a new understanding of Renaissance culture."—Arthur F. Kinney, editor of The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1500–1600

"Love's Quarrels contains much of interest to historians as well as to literary scholars; it is, however, particularly sure-footed and insightful in its handling of poetry and drama."—Renaissance Quarterly

"Evan A. Gurney's Love's Quarrels: Reading Charity in Early Modern England is the best of these studies and takes as its object charity's role as a principle governing human affairs, as opposed to a set of optional nice things to do. That's a wide-ranging topic, but one that Gurney handles ably."—Studies in English Literature

"Love's Quarrels is an impressive and illuminating book. Under Gurney's confident guidance, the concept of charity offers a valuable pathway toward an understanding of the shared and competing fantasies of belonging, caring, correcting, and giving that shaped post-Reformation England . . . It deserves a wide and generous audience."—Milton Quarterly