The City and the Word: London, “Jerusalem,” and the Early Modern

The City and the Word: London, “Jerusalem,” and the Early Modern English Nation by Ori Hanan Weisberg A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English Language and Literature) in The University of Michigan 2011 Doctoral Committee: Professor Linda K. Gregerson, Co-Chair Professor Michael C. Schoenfeldt, Co-Chair Professor Marjorie Levinson Assistant Professor Mira Seo ` For Ilana ותורת חסד על לשונה (משלי לא, כו) And a Torah of kindness is upon her tongue. (Proverbs 31:26) ii Acknowledgments As this dissertation that contains a chapter exploring the early modern English belief that the sin of ―unthankefullnesse‖ inevitably leads to calamities and destructions of historic proportions, the task of recognizing those who have contributed to and enabled this work appears particularly daunting. My first thanks go to my mother, Marilyn Weisberg, who taught me how to read, and to my father, Sidney I. Weisberg (z‖l), who instilled in me a profound reverence for learning of all kinds and who would have taken more joy in this accomplishment than perhaps anyone else had he lived to see its completion. I began my graduate work in literature at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. M. Josephine Diamond admitted me to the Program in Comparative Literature and Ann Baynes Coiro taught me the joys and intellectual challenges of studying poetry. My first academic home at the University of Michigan was The Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, where I received support and encouragement from Todd Endelman, Zvi Gitelman, Julian Levinson, and Anita Norich. Steven Mullaney admitted me to the Ph.D. program in The Department of English Language and Literature, for which I will always remain grateful. Michael C. Schoenfeldt became an early and enthusiastic mentor, and a co-chair of this project, who has never ceased to express his belief in my abilities, even at junctures when I struggled to recognize them. Linda K. Gregerson, my other co-chair, imbued this project with her irrepressible passion for learning and taught me how to marry a focus on big ideas to a iii focus on the turn of each phrase, as only a phenomenally gifted poet/scholar could. Marjorie Levinson provided a dazzling model of how to combine intellectual rigor and playfulness to make literary study both important and joyous. I could not conceive of a doctoral committee without her. J. Mira Seo brought an enthusiasm that helped to make the final push exciting and this work has benefited enormously from her rich knowledge of classical texts and her finely honed perspective on complex questions relating to the reception and appropriation of antiquity. Other faculty members who helped me shape my questions and ideas for how to pursue them include Sara Blair, Gregg Crane, Basil Dufallo, Jonathan Freedman, Yopie Prins, Cathy Sanok, Anton Shammas, and Karla Taylor. My work has been profoundly enriched by the collegiality of Stephanie Batkie, Stephanie Elsky, Gavin Hollis, Korey Jackson, Joanna Patterson, Robert Rich, Amy Rodgers, Jonathan Smith, and Michael Tondre. Portions of this dissertation were developed through conferences and workshops of the Early Modern Colloquium and I am grateful to that forum and all of its participants. Ari Friedlander has been a constant and unwavering interlocutor, supporter, and friend, such as it seems as if he was invented for me by the kindest playwright imaginable. I have also been fortunate to receive mentorship and encouragement from scholars outside of The University of Michigan community, including Arthur Marotti, Jason Rosenblatt, Julia Reinhardt Lupton, Achsah Guibbory and Benjamin Pollock. I began this path as a newlywed and have been blessed along the way with three astonishing children. Priya, Shai, and Tzipora have brought me more joy than I could have imagined prior to fatherhood. No matter how well the work was going or how daunting the challenges before me, their bold assertion of their rights to my attention and iv affections at the beginning and the end of each day kept my world from becoming small, sterile, and esoteric. While I labored to become a scholar, they have labored to make me into a father and I look forward to the continuation of their persistent efforts. My debt of gratitude to Ilana Blumberg defies all measurement and articulation. Her generous emotional and intellectual partnership, her patience and unwavering faith, and her insistence on bearing all three of our children leave me humbled. I revel in the fact that I will never be able to repay her in full and look forward to attempting the impossible. v Table of Contents Dedication ii Acknowledgments iii Chapter 1. Introduction 1 2. Hierusalem-upon-Thames: London and Jerusalem in Book I of Edmund Spenser‘sThe Faerie Queene 24 3. Morwen‘s Josippon to Nashe‘s Teares: from Vindicta Salvatoris to London‘s Apotheosis 79 4. ―To avoide that fowle blot of unthankefullnesse‖: Jerusalem‘s Destruction and English Nationhood in Spenser‘s The Ruines of Time 124 5. Conclusion 183 Bibliography 192 vi Chapter 1 Introduction London as Jerusalem – Jerusalem as London The penultimate illustration in Richard Blome‘s 1688 edition of Nicolas Fontaine‘s The history of the Old Testament, which serves as the frontispiece for this dissertation, bears the title ―The New Jerusalem.‖ At first glance, it seems a fairly faithfull representation of Revelation 21-22, where an angel shows St. John the celestial city that descends from heaven at the end of history. The city is perfectly rectangular, plausibly ―four-square,‖ and framed with the requisite walls and gates as described in scripture. But instead of showing ―a pure river of water of life…proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb‖ (22:1), the illustration places the city upon the right-hand bank of a broad river basin, surrounded by a moat, with no indication of the source of either waterway. One might infer from the biblical context that the water flows from a supernatural spring somewhere within the city, a key feature of John‘s vision. But the frame of the image cuts against the lower left corner of the city‘s walls, so that while the river flows into the valley and towards the image‘s vanishing point, it seems to flow past the city as would a natural body of water. This idealized urban image, its architecture dominated by rows of attached townhouses with peaked roofs and lacking any orientalist domes or arches that often appear in early printed depictions of Jerusalem, thus recalls the square-mile City of London that occupies the north bank of the Thames. Indeed, the buildings closely 1 resemble those in Anthony van den Wyngaerde‘s famous Panorama of London (1543). On the other hand, the moat that describes this urban rectangle suggests Westminster, adjacent to London. Westminster was originally built upon Thorney Island, formed by rivulets from the River Tyburn that have now been covered over, but which are still visible in Wyngaerde‘s Panorama with Fleet Street forming the northern boundary. Detail of Westminster from Wyngaerde‘s Panorama of London (1543) The plate from Blome‘s text sets the New Jerusalem along the right side of the river. Insofar as it suggests London or Westminster, the orientation of the image suggests a westward trajectory translating biblical Jerusalem to Restoration England. The resemblance of this ―New Jerusalem‖ to early modern London demonstrates how the repetition of an analogical figure can lead to reciprocity between tenor and vehicle. 2 Frequent employments of Jerusalem as a figure through which early modern writers imagined and addressed London have engendered a reversal whereby Jerusalem is imagined through the topography of London. * * * * * Jerusalem as sign of glory and calamity Centuries before William Blake would call for ―Jerusalem‖ to be built ―in England‘s green and pleasant fields,‖ early modern writers depicted London in the guise of both positive and negative iterations of Jerusalem and, in doing so, shaped their readers as subjects of a uniquely privileged nation. Indeed, these comparisons structure the literary and ideological background for Blake‘s poem, which has been set musically as a popular Anglican hymn and features prominently in English national rituals to this day. The Jerusalems to which Blake‘s antecedents compare London include the various depictions of the biblical capital in the prophetic and historiographic books of the Hebrew Scripture, including the Book of Lamentations, which depicts its destruction by Babylon in vivid and often gruesome verse. They also invoke the city over which Christ weeps as he foretells its doom in Luke 19. As the plate from Blome‘s text demonstrates, they employ the New Jerusalem that descends from heaven in Revelation. In addition to these scriptural images of Jerusalem drawn from both testaments, they often pair London with depictions of Jerusalem‘s destruction by Rome drawn from the account of Flavius Josephus and subsequent traditions that are built upon his text, though often with striking alterations. Whereas these available Jerusalems include the most sublime imagination of an ideal polity and its physical glory, the most exalted civitas and most pristine urbs, they 3 also include texts that focus on reproving its shortcomings and the calamities interpreted as divine justice. Early modern writers and preachers made ample use both of Jerusalem‘s apotheoses and calamities in addressing their own emergent capital. Jerusalem‘s status as an object of idealization and contempt leads its positive depictions to gesture to its negative depictions, and vice versa. God‘s unique ire at Jerusalem‘s shortcomings only appears just or makes sense given the exalted position he had granted the city and its people. On the other hand, when we consider the idealized depictions in scripture, we recall its two destructions.

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