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Pagan Fictions: Literature and False Religion in England, 1550–1650 Pagan Fictions: Literature and False Religion in England, 1550–1650 Joseph Wallace A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2012 Approved by: Reid Barbour Jessica Wolfe Megan Matchinske Mary Floyd-Wilson Robert Babcock ©2013 Joseph Wallace ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT JOSEPH WALLACE: Pagan Fictions: Literature and False Religion in England, 1550–1650 (Under the direction of Reid Barbour and Jessica Wolfe) This dissertation represents an effort to rethink one of the defining problems of the European Renaissance: the revival of pagan culture. It was very common for Renaissance Christians, from Giovanni Boccaccio to John Calvin, to argue that pagan religions were false because they were based on myths created by poets and politicians. But the Reformation project of distinguishing true from false versions of Christian religion blurred the boundaries between ancient and more recent versions of false religion. The hinge of this reorientation of religious values was the argument that certain religions were merely poetic fables, artificial fictions created by humans. And while some scholars have discussed the changing meaning of religion in the seventeenth century, no one has seen that literary language provided the terms for this change. My project corrects this by juxtaposing the religious imagery of the poetry of Robert Herrick, John Milton, and many others with contemporary debates about the poetic nature of religious imagery. In this way, my project makes a unique contribution to Renaissance studies by demonstrating not only that literary categories are fundamental to an understanding of religion, but also that the religious revolution of the Reformation produced lasting changes in how literary texts create meaning. iii For my parents, Lucy and Steve Wallace iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have been lucky to have been able to write this dissertation with the support of so many wonderful people, and under the aegis of an institution that has provided stimulating intellectual community and crucial financial assistance. My sincere thanks to the Department of English and Comparative Literature, the Graduate School of UNC-Chapel Hill, and the Program in Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Many friends and colleagues deserve thanks for their help in brining my work to fruition. Robert Erle Barham gave me an important reference in my first chapter, during one of our many conversations about English literature. Jessica Martell, Zackary Vernon, and Lynn Badia read a version of my fourth chapter and provided incisive comments, for which I am grateful. Profs. Megan Matchinske and Mary Floyd-Wilson taught me in their seminars and continued to guide me through the process of writing and thinking about early modern English literature. Their support has meant a lot to me over the years. William Russell, Dustin Mengelkoch, and Nathan Stogdill proved to be exceedingly good company, and our mutual interests informed each other in ways that were always inspiring. In particular, Nathan Stogdill listened patiently as my ideas took shape, and more than any other fellow graduate student at UNC has helped me develop into a bona fide scholar. But above all others, Reid Barbour and Jessica Wolfe have been constant and enthusiastic supporters of my work. They taught me so much, and I hope my career will follow unswervingly the path on which they set me. Personal relationships cannot be undervalued in producing a document as complex as a doctoral dissertation. I could not have v completed this project without the companionship of Zoe Gibbons, whose wit and humor have buoyed me when I lost momentum. I am grateful for all of our moments together. Finally, my parents, Lucy and Steve Wallace, have provided unerring and heartfelt support for my work and my choice of career, and I cannot thank them enough for their love and care. This dissertation is dedicated to them. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I. Introduction: Poetry, Pagan Theology, and the Creation of False Religion………..................................................................................................1 The Antiquarian Varro and his Three Theologies…………………………...14 Paganism, Art, and Social Control in the Reformation……………………...21 Mythography, Media, and Religion as Culture………………………………28 Varro’s Theologies and Renaissance Art in Twentieth-Century Scholarship…………………………………………………………...………43 II. Arthur Golding and the Interpretation of Paganism in Elizabethan England………………………………………………………………………73 III. Paganism, Festivity, and the Forms of Religious Discipline in Late Elizabethan England………………………………………………………..140 Richard Hooker and his Defense of Ritual………………………………....141 The Literature of Festivity………………………………………………….156 Ancient and Early Modern Pastoral………………………………………...174 A Midsummer Night’s Dream ……………………………………………....192 IV. Locating the Sacred: Pagan Spaces and Places in John Milton’s Early Works and Seventeenth-Century Religious Culture………………………………..221 Baal and the Places of Idolatry in Biblical Scholarship and Milton’s “Ode”……………………………………………………………………….225 Pagan Practices, the Right of Asylum, and the English Altar Controversy....................................................................................................238 vii Milton, the Genius Loci , and the Boundaries of Nation and Church……….276 V. Robert Herrick and Little, Sacred Things…………………………………..313 Herrick’s Poetic Pagan Religion and Its Sources…………………………..316 Herrick’s Poetry of Miniatures……………………………………………..333 Puppets and Profanity………………………………………………………343 VI. Conclusion: The Poetry of False Religion and the Religion of the Secular World…….....................................................................................................362 viii Chapter 1 Introduction: Poetry, Pagan Theology, and the Creation of False Religion In 1781, the historian Edward Gibbon wrote that “The ruin of Paganism, in the age of Theodosius, is perhaps the only example of the total extirpation of any ancient and popular superstition; and may therefore deserve to be considered as a singular event in the history of the human mind.” 1 The scourge of paganism was, for Gibbon, the “zeal” of the Christians, a zeal that raged against the cooler sense of “human prudence” (2:78). Gibbon laments not the loss of paganism’s “superstitious” theology but its social function and its artistic elegance. In fact, Gibbon seems to value the fact that paganism reveled in human creations rather than an abstracting religious zeal that subsumed all within its spirit. But what most provokes Gibbon, in his sarcastically excoriating way, is the way that the forces of laws and empire were marshaled to end what was a deeply ingrained social, political, devotional, and artistic system. The destruction of pagan arts had long produced a sense of loss for Renaissance intellectuals, too. Lorenzo Ghiberti, for example, in a much-quoted passage from his Commentaries , wrote, The Christian faith achieved victory in the time of the Emperor Constantine and Pope Sylvester. Idolatry was most stringently persecuted so that all statues and pictures, noble, and of antique and perfect venerability as they were, were destroyed and rent to pieces. With the statues and pictures were consumed books, commentaries, drawings and the rules by which one could learn such noble and excellent arts. In 1 Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , ed. David Womersley, 3 vols. (London: Allen Lane, Penguin Press, 1994), 2:71. Further references will appear in the text. order to abolish every ancient custom of idolatry it was decreed that all the temples should be white. At this time the most severe penalty was ordered for anyone who made any statue or picture. Thus ended the art of sculpture and painting and all the knowledge and skill that had been achieved in it. Art came to an end and the temples remained white for about six hundred years. 2 Ghiberti clearly regretted the “false choice between art and religion” 3 posed by the early Christians, and there is even the sense that he regretted the loss of paganism as an artistic mode, or a complete cultural system. I begin by citing these two writers, separated by three hundred years, to demonstrate a particular failing in our interpretation of the Renaissance renewal of pagan antiquity, namely our willingness to separate the idea of “art” from the religious and political resonances of paganism. Neither Gibbon nor Ghiberti thought about the renewal of pagan arts separately from the troubling consequences of bringing back the cultural system signified by the place of art and fiction within pagan religion. As I will suggest in this introduction and in my dissertation, there is a very good reason why scholars hesitate to read pagan fictions in the way that they were read in the Renaissance. These fictions were part of a system that originated, for Renaissance artists and thinkers, from a mistake, an error with significant religious consequences. And while scholars of this period often note the language used by those in the Renaissance to describe pagan errors, we rarely parse it, nor do we try to find out what it might mean, outside of the grand narrative of Christian history, to claim that pagan religion was created by “demons” and that those demons exerted control over the secular functions of government and other social institutions. Yet,
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