Protestant Revolution & its Repercussion regarding English Literature

The impact of the Protestant Revolution upon English literature can best be described as having a kind of a long-standing 'ripple' effect. In other words, the impact of the revolution was long-lasting and 'felt' but took awhile to transverse the continent and across the ocean from Germany and Italy to England before its repercussions could be measured. The original Protestant Revolution took place in Germany. Lutheranism took hold in Continental Europe far away from England. King Henry VIII, until he challenged Papal supremacy was known as the Defender of the Catholic faith, until the faith challenged his own authority as King of England and his right to obtain a divorce and produce an heir.

However, Luther's challenge to the supremacy of the Pope certainly created the intellectual foundations for the British nation's split from the Holy Roman Empire, even if Anglicanism was not the direct product of Martin Luther's rebellion. Later, works such as the vulgate translation of the bible into the King James Bible, a landmark of religious poetry, as well as imaginative retellings of the Biblical story along Protestant thought, such as Milton's "Paradise Lost," could all be read as having their imaginative origins in the Protestant Revolution. The Protestant Revolution empowered common authors and people to envision the gospel in their own words and terms. Even "Hamlet" has a reference to the Protestant Revolution at its beginning, to the prince's desire to return to Luther's home of Wittenberg. The story of this great play deals with theological questions such as royal authority and the proper way to address the funeral rites and moral, Christian revenge on behalf of the dead.

Of course, the effects of the Protestant Revolution were not always beneficial for literature. When Protestantism's more extreme forms, such as Puritanism, took hold in England, fictional imagination was often condemned as heresy. The Puritan's moral rule caused the English theaters to be closed, during Oliver Cromwell's reign. The idea of England's Protestant Revolution encompasses both the relatively secular and expansive vision of Queen Elizabeth I and the Scottish King James, as well as the narrow and doctrinaire Puritanism of Oliver Cromwell. But while one cannot categorize Protestantism as either liberal or conservative in its lasting influence on English literature, its impact was clearly present, and felt.