Closet Devotions

“Closet Devotions is a brilliant exposition of the carnal subtext of Renaissance spirituality and a major contribution to our understanding of religious verse.” - Richard C. McCoy, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

“Closet Devotions is both impressive and potentially disquieting scholarship. . . . It is to be hoped that interested Hispanists will take advantage of Rambuss’s insights.” - Christopher B. Weimer , Calíope

“A timely contribution to literary and cultural history. . . . this slight, stimulating book is worth the effort . . . for its powerful exploration of the architectural and psychological contours of the prayer closet.” - Andrew McRae , Parergon

"[A] provocative and well-written book . . . . [I]mpressive reading . . . . [A] bold book . . . . [A] major critical intervention in seventeenth-century studies. It will remain a central part of the conversation for some time to come."

- Michael Schoenfeldt , Modern Philology

"Rambuss does an amazing analytical and interpretive piece of work on [the Metaphysical Poets]." - Tony Coxon, Sexualities

"Rambuss's readings demonstrate the breadth of the Christian tradition against its own normalizing and constraining tendencies." - Amy Hollywood , Signs

“Closet Devotions is a bold and original work. Rambuss asks us to take seriously the relation between sexual and religious affect in the Renaissance devotional lyric, without reducing one to the other. In a series of virtuoso readings, he brings together two previously distant fields of scholarly inquiry, enriching our sense of the affective intensity of religious lyric at the same time that he demonstrates the astonishing scope of human sexuality.” - John David Guillory, Harvard University

“[Closet Devotions] is vividly and clearly written, it is original in its insistence on seeing the ‘sacred eroticism’ of the lyric it studies as eroticism, and it is interestingly provocative in its juxtapositions of that lyric to present-day queer representations.” - Henry Abelove, Wesleyan University