Utopia e ascesi nel puritanesimo inglese

[Machine translation] As is well known, ascetic practices, models and conceptions have permeated European societies and culture, especially after the spread of Christianity, and this since the first centuries after Christ, gradually changing and adapting to different contexts and periods and, through various metamorphoses, have reached the present day. But what about asceticism — this is the question that underpins the research collected here — and its specific characteristics, including political ones, within the contexts crossed by secularization and characterized by the peculiar phenomena of secular religions? The volume presents the first results of innovative research aimed precisely at reconstructing the long-term premises of a topic little investigated, namely asceticism in secular religions. The historical and conceptual roots of secular religions, typical phenomena of the contemporary age, must in fact be sought in the centuries of the modern age. Setting itself in this context, the essay deals with the theme of the rise in the landscape of puritanical utopian thought in seventeenth-century England.