Moving Imitation: Performing Piety in Early Modern English Literature
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Moving Imitation: Performing Piety in Early Modern English Literature Author: Sara Hong Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/644 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2009 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Boston College The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Department of English MOVING IMITATION: PERFORMING PIETY IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE a dissertation by SARA HONG submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2009 1 © copyright by Sara Hong 2009 2 ABSTRACT MOVING IMITATION: PERFORMING PIETY IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE Author: Sara Hong Advisor: Mary Thomas Crane Using the rich concept of imitatio as an organizing theme, this study explores the tangibility of faith and a privileging of an affective, embodied religious subjectivity in post-Reformation England. Moving Imitation asserts that literary and devotional concepts of imitatio—as the Humanist activity of translation and as imitatio Christi— were intensely interested in semiotics. Indeed, if the Renaissance was a period in which literary imitatio flourished, advancements in translation theory were not unaccompanied by anxieties—in this case, anxieties about the stability of language itself. Likewise, as iconophilia turned into iconophobia, a similar anxiety about the reliability of signs also characterized the turmoil of the English Reformation. Moving Imitation examines the overlapping qualities of both types of imitatio in order to point out how an important devotional aesthetic in the period involves a type of embodied imitation. The human body’s resonance with the humanity of Christ and the pre-Cartesian worldview that saw the human body as fully engaged with what we consider to be more cognitive functions contributed to a privileging of the body as an acceptable sign of true devotion. Beginning with Sir Thomas Wyatt’s paraphrase of the traditional penitential psalms, Moving Imitation explores the translation of penitence in Wyatt’s work, and argues that a focus on David’s outward gestures and body lends a firmness to a work that is otherwise anxious about the mutable nature of human words. Chapter two examines the suffering bodies in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments and their enactment of a visible imitatio Christi. Terms such as “members” function in its corporeal and communal senses in Acts and Monuments, for the marks of one’s membership in the “true church” are born, literally, on one’s members. Although much of Foxe’s argumentation includes polemical disputes that seek to shut out a copia of meanings to the words, “This is my body,” Foxe as an editor exploits the polysemous nature of the body in its corporeal and communal sensibilities. The performative aspects of martyrdom pave the way to a discussion of what I call transformative imitatio in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and The Winter’s Tale. Although the theater’s ability to “body forth” its fiction is a source of anxiety for antitheatricalists, proponents of the stage saw it as a way to defend the theater. Moving Imitation notes that the characterization of the stage’s dangers—the ability to move people’s affections—articulates an important Reformist desire: that the individual subject should not only be affected, but also be galvanized into devotional imitation. Such interest in action becomes important in Hamlet; if the central dilemma of the play (Hamlet’s inability to take action) is considered against a common religious dilemma (how one stirs oneself towards genuine worship) the solutions as well as the problems overlap. Through the statue scene of The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare defuses the danger attributed to the stage by animating a potentially idolatrous image with life; in ways that were only hinted at in Hamlet, The Winter’s Tale makes use of the lively bodies onstage 3 to suggest that the presumed connection between idolatry and the imitative stage is an unwarranted one, and “to see… life as lively mocked” can help to perform redemption. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS " % " ! # ! "# "% # ## #& $ $$ % %& & ! &" &$ " % % & " ! i ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is with much pleasure and gratitude that I turn to acknowledge all those who have supported me and labored with me on this journey. I want to thank my advisor, Mary T. Crane, for her guidance throughout my time at Boston College; this project would not have been possible without her warm support, incisive suggestions, and timely feedback. Her generosity as a scholar and mentor is something that I hope to imitate in the future. I am also grateful for the help of my readers, Dayton Haskin and Amy Boesky, and how they have helped to provide focus for this project. Lively camaraderie within the graduate student community at Boston College has helped to make this journey enjoyable, and I want to thank Chad Stutz, Jaime Goodrich, and Katherine Kellett for their friendship. Support from Boston College’s graduate and dissertation fellowships allowed me to have the time and resources to work on this project. Finally, I am deeply indebted to the support of my family, friends, and church. My parents, Won and Eun Choi, have encouraged me in my studies even though it was not the most stable or common career path. Their hard work and commitment to their children continue to challenge me, especially as I begin to face my own role as a parent. My sister, Jung Yoon Choi, and my brother, Mike Choi, have been and are sources of much cheer and comfort. My churches in both Boston and Berkeley have been havens of sanity and clarity, and I am indebted to many mentors and friends who have embodied and shown charity to me throughout the years. Last but not least, I would like to thank my husband, Jisup Hong. Although busy with his own graduate work, he has been a constant source of encouragement, help, and direction. iii INTRODUCTION VERSIONS OF IMITATIO This dissertation examines how the semantically rich concept of imitatio helped shape the responses triggered by the religious anxieties of the English Reformation. While the theory of literary imitation in the Renaissance differed from source to source, its wide influence in the period is undeniable and has generated much fruitful scholarship.1 Aside from its ubiquity in early modern culture, one of the most intriguing aspects of early modern imitatio is the fact that the translator is conceived to be both the subject and object of translation—that is, as one imitates and produces a new work of one’s own, the activity of translation begets a kind of transformation within the writer himself. Since Humanists viewed education as an ethical as well as an intellectual endeavor, imitatio was an important pedagogical tool in instilling not just proper writing techniques, but cognitive and ethical patterns of behavior as well. Indeed, the multiple metaphors used to describe good and bad works of imitation are indicative of how imitatio was viewed as an organic process; in its apian, digestive, filial, and simian images, imitation operates, at a fundamental level, as a conversion process. To quote Petrarch’s advice: “Take care that what you have gathered does not long remain in its original form inside of you: the bees would not be glorious if they did not convert what they found into something different and something better. Although the literary and devotional definitions of the term imitatio are not conventionally paired, I see articulated in the converting effects of the good imitator an important desire in early modern religion: imitation that results in comprehensive change. Just as the metaphor of a bee’s activity reflects the ideal translation of language and 1 ideas, the bee’s ability to extract and convert manifests the essence of the devout soul. In his popular guide to private devotion, Francois de Sales borrows from the familiar literary metaphor in order to illustrate his point about personal piety: “Watch a bee hovering over the mountain thyme; the juices it gathers are bitter, but the bee turns them all to honey— and so tells the worldling that though the devout soul finds bitter herbs along its path of devotion, they are all turned to sweetness and pleasantness as it treads.”2 The life of Christ illuminates the “path of devotion,” and the concept of imitatio Christi was seen as an important touchstone for personal piety in early modern England. Just as the literary understanding of imitatio did not have a fixed definition, imitatio Christi also operated as a loosely-defined term in early modern England. Functioning as an important religious ideal, imitatio Christi emphasized Christ as the perfect example for believers to follow, and was further popularized through Thomas a Kempis’ fifteenth-century work. Although Kempis’ Latin work operated originally within the context of Catholic piety, popular Protestant translations such as Thomas Rogers’ 1580 version points to how the idea of imitatio Christi remained a vibrant notion in Elizabethan England.3 Passages such as Ephesians 5:1-2 provided scriptural impetus for imitation as worship: “Bee yee therefore followers of God, as deare children, and walke in loue, euen as Christ hath loued vs, and hath giuen himselfe for vs” (Geneva version). Indeed, the logic of correlation and imitation is found everywhere in Scripture, and is a particularly important idea in the Pauline epistles. In emphasizing the correspondence between Christ (referent) and the believer (sign), the theme of imitatio Christi pointed to the unbridgeable gap between oneself and one’s model (doctrine of 2 depravity), and yet operated as an viable mode of Christian self-fashioning (doctrine of sanctification). It is here in the realm of signs that imitatio (as Renaissance Humanist literary activity) and imitatio Christi (as a devotional ideal) meet.