Violence against the sacred: Tragedy and religion in early modern England

This dissertation argues that the tragedy of the English Renaissance reflects the religious culture of the era in its depiction of sacrificial violence. It contests New Historicist assumptions about both the relationship between religion and politics, and the relationship between religion and literature, by arguing that the tragedians were reflecting the Girardian sacrificial crisis that characterized martyr executions in the sixteenth century and which was fuelled by uncertainty within the church over the issue of violence.;Each of the three subsequent chapters is devoted to a different tragedian. Chapter Two discusses William Shakespeare's King Lear, a play which is radical in its sympathy for the sacrificial victim. King Lear shows no particular faith in Christian redemption, but in this very lack of transcendence it demystifies and condemns sacrificial violence. Chapter Three is devoted to John Webster's two tragedies, The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi. Here, the argument is focused on Webster's use of the theological concept of participation to draw the audience's attention to its own involvement in the tragic violence. Finally, Chapter Four discusses John Milton's Samson Agonistes. This play has been hotly debated by critics who argue that Milton either supported or condemned Samson's destruction of the Philistines. The argument of the chapter, though, is that the play reflects a nuanced understanding of Samson's violence that mingles approval and disapproval.;Chapter One develops the historical framework. It begins by surveying the history of Protestant and Catholic martyrdom in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It then traces the doctrine of the persecuted church---the recovered New Testament sense that the true church is necessarily a persecuted minority that suffers for Christ's sake---in various religious writers of the period. The most important of these writers is the martyrologist John Foxe, who fostered an anti-sacrificial strain of Christianity from within the national church. Finally, I discuss how this victim-centred theology disrupted consensus at religious executions, offering an emotional template that the tragedians exploited.