"Personal Identity and Literary Personae: a Study in    Historical  Psychology," PMLA, XC.2 (March, 1975), 209-21

ABSTRACT In the Renaissance, religious and political confrontations generated an intensified awareness of the self which marks a decisive phase in the evolution of human personality, whose study may be entitled Historical Psychology. Alienation from religious and political strife turned the interests of Petrarch and Montaigne toward their own minds, Marot's persecution for heresy developed his self-awareness in L'Enfer, followed by Ronsard's self-defensive autobiography in his Reply to Insults. Such models prefigure Milton's authorial intrusions of Paradise Lost. Shakespeare illustrates the creative impact of religious controversy by enriching the hints of Lollardry in Falstaff with a wide variety of Puritan affectations in the Elizabethan period. The Protestant attacks on Machiavelli also help in developing the character of Richard III and similar introverted creations, as T. S. Eliot notes. By the time of Marvell, personality is considered essentially artificial and willed - an inheritance from which Swift, the Romantics, and many modern authors have profited. Historical Psychology is thus a necessary tool if we are to handle the development of literary tradition