"A Catalogue of Errours now in being": Discipline, intertextuality and circulation of orthodox and heterodox ideas in Thomas Edwards' Gangraena (1646)

• Grant number: 16/17337-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: November 01, 2016
• End date: December 22, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Modern and Contemporary History
• Principal Investigator: Luis Filipe Silverio Lima
• Grantee: Patrícia Moreira Nogueira
• Supervisor: Ariel Hessayon
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Goldsmiths, University of London, England
• Associated to the scholarship: 14/26179-0 - Responses in Gangraena (1646): intertextuality and circulation of orthodox and heterodox ideas during the first English Civil War, BP.MS

Abstract

The main goal in this research project is to think about the disputes between orthodoxy and heterodoxy during the English Civil War through the intertextuality and the circulation of ideas verifiable within Thomas Edwards' disciplinary work, Gangraena: or A Catalogue and Discovery of many of the Errours, Heresies, Blasphemies and pernicious Practices of the sectaries of this time, published in 1646. Thereby, the aim is to understand what was considered heretical and how these heresies were linked to the interests of an orthodoxy defended by Edwards, especially in the 1640s, as well as comprehend the discussion about the government and discipline of the Church. It's important to ascertain how the debate regarding those issues took place, by the means of the responses of Edwards' allies and opponents set in the publication itself. It is relevant, as well, to analyse Gangraena as a heresiography part of a larger rhetorical and literary movement and also associated to a confessional and disciplinary process that was bigger than the English Civil War. To conduct this study, it will be used the three parts of Gangraena that circulated in 1646, well as complementary documents concerning the debate between Edwards and his allies and opponents, along with sources about the Presbyterian movement in that time. From a methodological point of view, it seems appropriate to focus on the History of Reading and the reflections regarding the religious and conceptual issues of the early modern period and above all, the intertextuality of Edwards' writings. It is expected to find the text in the midst of a coeval struggles in order to comprehend the criticism of the practices and behaviours that were, for the author, a disease in England during that period.