＂Once feared by Queen Elizabeth I and admired by William Shakespeare, Robert Southwell, s.j. (1561-1595), clings today to a thinning canonical presence in English literature among a sphere of
other writers incongruously called the metaphysical poets. Southwell’s Sphere lifts this sixteenth century Jesuit priest and prolific writer from the obscurity in which he too often resides and
places him instead at the center of a sphere of English poets upon whom his life and works exerted an observable influence.As he weaved his religious content into the familiar loom of
Elizabethan form and style, this young missionary priest was seeking not just to catechize those whom he regarded as the faithful and the fallen, but to intentionally reform the verse of his
native England. Remarkably, during his brief six-year mission, he actually managed in many respects to do so. Surviving for six years by successfully navigating and fostering a complicated
underground Catholic network in and around London before being captured, tortured and imprisoned, Southwell was brought to trial and executed at Tyburn at age 33. He therefore never knew most
of the ＂skillfuller wits＂ that he called upon to direct their poetic skills to the service of God. And like the marks upon his tortured body, the poetic marks of influence that his work left
upon individual writers of this era were in many cases deliberately concealed. Southwell’s Sphere seeks to rediscover those marks and offer the reader a renewed appreciation for this subverted
and subverting literary force in Early Modern England＂--
