Renaissance English Text Society (RETS), Vol. XXVI

An Edition of Luke Shepherd's Satires

Edited by Janice Devereux
2001 | 221 pp. | Cloth | 6 x 9 in | 978-0-86698-282-5 | MRTS 240
$40 | £36

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This edition locates Shepherd within the literary environment of the religious debates in popular English verse printed in the first two years of Edward VI's reign. Published anonymously, Shepherd's anti-Catholic tracts appeared in 1548 and include eight verse satires and one satiric prose work that have not previously been collected in a single volume. It collates all known copies of Shepherd's extant works, comprehensively annotates and glosses the texts, and discusses their literary merit. Shepherd's witty and readable poems, mainly skeltonic in style, attack the Mass, the doctrine of transubstantiation, the feast of Corpus Christi, Catholic clergy and ideology, and clerical celibacy; Bishop Stephen Gardiner, William Layton, and Dr. Richard Smith are among his individual targets. This volume will be of interest to scholars of 16th-century English literature and history and Reformation studies.