Olivia Anderson Campbell

Thesis Title: "[L]ord, thou keepest us at uncertaintyes": Providential Hermeneutics in Nonconformist Restoration Literature

Supervisors: Rev Dr Erica Longfellow, Dr Margaret Kean

Research Interests: religious and political dissent; faith and literature; early modern England; History of the Book

Doctoral Research: Contextualized in the political, social, and religious turbulence of late seventeenth-century England and a contemporary fear that God's will is indiscernable, my research examines how contemporaries find a source of authority in times of uncertainty. The authors I examine (namely, John Dryden, John Milton, John Bunyan, Lucy Hutchinson, and Richard Baxter) use various literary forms to facilitate dialogue between themselves and their political and religious enemies, with the hopes of identifying an authority which can be true for all, rather than only those in power.