Radical Religion from Shakespeare to Milton: Figures of Nonconformity in Early Modern England. By Kristen Poole. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xiv + 272. $59.95.

In this important new book, Kristen Poole urges the reader to rethink the history of satirical representations of puritans, arguing compellingly that, while scholarship has focused on the figure of asceticism and repression, this image was countered by representations of puritan bodies as grotesque and their gatherings as carnivalesque. Indeed, Poole maintains that the image of the drunken, gluttonous, and lascivious puritan predominates in early modern literature. Ranging widely among pamphlets, sermons, and religious writings of the period, and offering a fresh perspective on well-known literary texts, Poole also suggests that fictional puritans functioned as a means of representing the social and discursive repercussions of radical religious nonconformity.

Laura Lunger Knoppers
The Pennsylvania State University