HONEY from the LION: INTERPRETATION and RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION in EARLY MODERN ENGLISH AUTOBIOGRAPHY Kathleen Robin Curtin A
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HONEY FROM THE LION: INTERPRETATION AND RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH AUTOBIOGRAPHY Kathleen Robin Curtin 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 2013 Approved by: Reid Barbour Jessica Wolfe Megan Matchinske Darryl Gless David Steinmetz ©2013 Kathleen Robin Curtin All Rights Reserved ii ABSTRACT KATHLEEN ROBIN CURTIN: Honey from the Lion: Interpretation and Religious Persecution in Early Modern English Autobiography (Under the direction of Reid Barbour) In Judges 10, Samson finds the corpse of a lion filled with honey, and from this experience, he crafts a riddle. For writers from a variety of confessional backgrounds, Samson’s paradox of honey in the lion evokes the mysterious and multilayered nature of religious persecution. Just as Samson frames this meeting of contraries as an interpretive puzzle, so also sufferers struggle to ascribe meaning to early modern religious conflict. While martyrologies and histories tend to reduce religious persecution into two-dimensional clashes between polarized perspectives, autobiographies reveal the multidimensional nature of this experience as a crisis of identity and interpretation that unfolds not only between religious groups, but within the mind, imagination, and will of the sufferer himself. In chapters on Thomas More’s Dialogue of Comfort, John Bale’s Vocacyon, John Donne’s Devotions, Toby Mathew’s True Historical Relation, and John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding, I situate these individuals’ interpretive processes in the context of early modern debates about how to interpret the shared meaning-making resources inherited from the medieval church, including church history, tradition, the sacraments, and Scripture. iii FOR DANIEL AND JENNIFER CURTIN iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply grateful to the professors, colleagues, friends, and family members who have invested so much in me over the past six years. Through his encouragement, teaching, and, above all, through his example, Reid Barbour has shown me what it means to be a truly excellent scholar. From my master’s thesis to the chapters of this dissertation, he has read and responded to countless drafts, each time leaving me both with a clear path forward and with motivating encouragement. As his TA, I caught a vision for teaching Renaissance literature that I will aspire to live up to for the rest of my career. Jessica Wolfe has shaped me as a scholar through her extraordinary Renaissance seminars, her responses to my writing, and her commitment to mentorship. From my earliest days at UNC as her research assistant, Megan Matchinske has taken the time to help me grow as a scholar and as a person. I am grateful to her for her comments on my work as well as for her assistance to me in my preparations for going on the job market. Even though I was not one of his students, David Steinmetz of the Divinity School at Duke Universersity generously agreed to be on my committee. His insight into reformation history has been extremely valuable to me, and I am deeply appreciative of the times he has read drafts and then discussed them with me over coffee at his house. Darryl Gless has v been a valuable source of knowledge about reformation history and literature, and I am grateful for his reading of drafts and involvement in this project. My colleagues in the department of English have made these six years rich by creating an environment of camaraderie, encouragement, and collaboration. I especially want to thank Robert Erle Barham, who has read and provided comments on every chapter of this dissertation. Adair Rispoli deserves a special thank you for her friendship during these years of graduate school. I am also grateful to Julie Fann, Jennifer Park, and Vaughn Stewart for offering advice and encouragement along the way. Thanks to a Charlotte Newcombe Fellowship administered through the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, I had a year in which to work on this dissertation uninterrupted. One of the most extraordinary periods of my life, the year they gave me was an incredible gift and opportunity for which I will always be thankful. I am also grateful to Reid Barbour for the opportunity I have had to work for Studies in Philology under the guidance of such an excellent editor. My friendships, my church community, and my family have helped me become more fully human during these years and have taught me invaluable lessons about finding balance in work, living in community, and finding joy in the long process of earning a PhD. I want to offer special thanks to my friends from the University of South Carolina, Anna Stonecypher Miller, Virginia Hurst, Amy Sloan, Priscilla Larkin Harris, Katie Porteous, and Roger Keane. Not only during my years in Columbia but even more after I left, you challenged me to grow through your vi faithful presence in my life. To Amy, thank you for giving me a reason to apply to UNC in the first place and for being a friend nearby during these years. Anna, Ginny, and Priscilla, without your encouragement, I would never have started, much less finished, graduate school. Katherine Michalets, my longest-time friend, deserves special thanks for her consistent and faithful friendship. My housemates at 35 Davie Circle turned these years into an incredibly rich period of friendship, prayer, and discovery. Mary Catherine Shafer, Virginia McCray, Miranda Pierce, Christina Harris, Lydia Butner, Charissa Gray, Grace Wilson, Laura McClain, Megan Christiansen, Lauren Bruton, and Johannah Swank, thank you for praying with me, for hours of conversation in the kitchen, and for sharing the many steps of this long process. I will remember the lessons I learned from you after the details of this dissertation are long forgotten. To my church community, thank you for seeing me as a person rather than as a graduate student. Thanks to the space outside of work that you opened to me on Sundays, I was able to enter the “six-day’s world” each week and take on my work with freedom and joy. I especially want to thank Teresa Leonarz for taking good care of me and for showing me what it looks like to live a life of generosity. I am thankful to Byron Peters and Greg Norfleet, the pastors of Christ Community Church, for their preaching andleadership. Hank Tarleton, the minister for UNC’s Gradute Intervarsity Fellowship, has been a consistent mentor to me through the ups and downs of many years, and I am very grateful to him for his ministry. vii The high value my family has always placed on education and creativity shaped my love of learning from the beginning. My siblings, Ben and Hahna Curtin, amaze me with their ability to form audacious artistic visions and turn them into reality. I am deeply grateful for the ways they have challenged and inspired me during these years. My aunt, Ann Marie Curtin, has been encouraged me in my creative and academic endeavors since I was very young. I am very grateful to her and to Steve Blatnik for their unfailing support and love. My aunt and uncle Tom and Susan Curtin drastically changed my life in Chapel Hill by giving me a car in 2007. I am so thankful for the ability to visit friends and family, as well as the ability to get around town, that they provided with this extremely generous gift. Most importantly, I acknowledge my parents, Daniel and Jennifer Curtin, for their continual involvement in and support of my education. My mother filled our house with books, taught me to love learning, and showed me from an early age that work can be a source of deep joy.Finally, my father deserves special thanks. From the beginning, this PhD was a dream he andI shared. Thank you for having big visions for me and for the hours of phone conversations, thousands of miles of driving,and unfailing encouragement and love that turned those visions into reality. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………1 Chapter I. A FEVER BOTH HOT AND COLD: MARTYRDOM AS INTERNAL CONFLICT IN MORE’S DIALOGUE OF COMFORT…………………………………………………………………29 Erasmus, the Tears of Christ, and Internal Conflict………………...31 Book 1: The Role of Reason in the Interpretation of Affliction….…45 Book 2: The Role of the Imagination in the Interpretation of Affliction………………………………………………….…………51 Book 3: The Role of the Will in the Interpretation of Affliction....…55 Conclusion………………………………………………………..…65 II. EATING A BITTERSWEET BOOK: RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION AS A RESPONSE TO THE WORD IN JOHN BALE’S VOCACYON and IMAGE OF BOTH CHURCHES…………………...………………67 The Legibility of the Word, History, and Nature in the Image of Both Churches and the Examinations of Anne Askew…………………….69 Persecution as a Mark of Ministerial Identity in the Vocacyon…..….83 Conclusion…………………………………………………………105 III. “LITTLE THINGS TO SIGNIFY GREAT”: MARTYRDOM, ILLNESS, AND INTERPRETIVE PROCESS IN JOHN DONNE’S PSEUDO-MARTYR and DEVOTIONS UPON EMERGENT OCCASIONS……………………………………………………………...110 Views of Martyrdom in Donne’s Family…………………………..111 ix Donne’s View of Martyrdom…………………………………………....119 Self-Interpretation in the Devotions…………………………………..…133 Reading the Self in the Context of Nature……………………………....140 Reading the Self in the Context of Scripture…………………………....144 Reading the Self in the Context of Christ and the Sacraments………….151 Metaphors for Donne’s Interpretive Process…………………………....154 Conclusion………………………………………………………………164 IV. MARYTRDOM AS A MARK OF THE VISIBLE CHURCH IN TOBY MATHEW’S TRUE HISTORICAL RELATION AND MISSIVE OF CONSOLATION………………………………………………………...…167 Conversion, Life-Writing, and Polemic in Jacobean England…………….168 Mathew’s Social Milieu in England and Abroad………………………….174 True Historical Relation………………………………………………………….179 Mathew’s Last Exile and the Missive of Consolation..................................198 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………213 V.