'Betwixt Jest and Earnest'

Marprelate, Milton, Marvell, and Swift are among the best prose satirists in a remarkably rich literary era. Focusing on these key figures, ‘Betwixt Jest and Earnest’ examines the theory and practice of religious prose in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Recognizing the difficulties inherent in attempting to transform unimaginative animadversion into effective satire, it analyses the ways in which Marprelate’s tracts, Milton’s anti-prelatical satires, Marvell’s The Rehearsal Transpros’d,