Representing Religious Pluralization in Early Modern Europe

Book excerpt: The title of this volume indicates more than a referential relationship: Representing Religious Pluralization entails not just the various ways in which the historical processes of pluralization were reflected in texts and other cultural artefacts, but also, crucially, the cultural work that spawned these processes. Reflecting, driving, shaping and subverting religious systems, representation becomes a divisive force in Reformation Europe as religious pluralization erupts in a contest over how to conceive, to symbolize and to perform religious belief. The essays in this book offer a broad range of perspectives on the pluralizing effects of cultural representation as well as on the various attempts at containing them.