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Copyright by Sara Rives Saylor 2015 The Dissertation Committee for Sara Rives Saylor certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Penitential Experience in Renaissance Romance Committee: Frank Whigham, Supervisor Wayne Rebhorn Jennifer-Kate (J.K.) Barret Hannah Chapelle Wojciehowski Eric Mallin Penitential Experience in Renaissance Romance by Sara Rives Saylor, BA; MA Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2015 In loving memory of Rives Fleming, Jr. He was troubled by the thought of how easy it was for a man to wreck his whole life in a single wrong act. After that the guy suffered forever, no matter what he did to make up for the wrong. At times, as the clerk had sat in his room late at night, a book held stiffly in his reddened hands, his head numb although he wore a hat, he felt a strange falling away from the printed page and had this crazy sensation that he was reading about himself. At first this picked him up but then it deeply depressed him. Bernard Malamud, The Assistant To dream of a one-time future reformation may well serve to dispel the fear that reformation is something he needs now and always. Harry Berger, Jr., Making Trifles of Terrors “Less shame washes away a greater fault than yours,” said the master. “Therefore unburden yourself of all sadness, and do not forget that I am always at your side.” Dante, Inferno Acknowledgments This project could not have taken shape without the guidance of my advisor, Frank Whigham, who has been a generous mentor throughout my years at the University of Texas. I am grateful for the encouragement and feedback of my committee members, J.K. Barret, Eric Mallin, Wayne Rebhorn, and Hannah Wojciehowski. For personal and professional support at UT, I thank Mary Blockley, Doug Bruster, Evan Carton, Cole Hutcheson, Martin Kevorkian, Wayne Lesser, John Rumrich, Patricia Schaub, and Amy Stewart. Matthew Harrison accompanied me out of Despair’s cave and back to my quest. I thank him for committing an extraordinary amount of time and energy to this project and for helping me to rediscover joy in academic writing. The tireless Mary Hedengren reviewed every draft and kept me moving forward each week. Thanks to Andrew Escobedo and Debapriya Sarkar for invaluable suggestions during the home stretch. This project was enriched by conversations with Chris Barrett, Dennis Britton, Jeff Dolven, Greg Foran, Lisa Gulesserian, Joshua Held, Sean Henry, Michael Johnson, Aileen Liu, Dan Lochman, Joseph Loewenstein, David Lee Miller, Bill Oram, Stephanie Rosen, Dustin Stewart, Donald Stump, and Sarah Van der Laan. For comments on preliminary sections of these chapters, I thank the Sidney-Spenser community at Kalamazoo and the Sixteenth Century Society Conference, along with participants in the “Disenchantments/Re-enchantments” and “Literary Romance” seminars at SAA. I am grateful to Harry Berger, Jr., who first inspired me to study Renaissance literature, for his suggestions and encouragement. Thanks to Esther Richey and Nina Levine, vi who introduced me to Shakespeare studies as an undergraduate, and to other early mentors who taught me to write: Judy Kalb, Alex Ogden, Don Greiner, and Rene Bufo Miles. I am indebted to the healers and teachers who helped me to return to work with renewed strength after a car accident slowed me down: Aqeel Salim, Isaiah Guebara, and Iva Drtina-Hall. Karl and Kimbi Hagen hosted peaceful writing retreats. Thomas King kept me caffeinated for many years of this journey; I thank him and the staff at Caffé Medici for a serene workspace and daily encouragement. Deepest gratitude to my partners and friends in the Austin dance community, including Bill, Fonda, Gilles, Glenn, Hunter, Karen, Larry, Mark, Peter, Rakesh, Sam, Sonia, and Sway. I have no words to express my appreciation, but this moment from The Winter’s Tale comes close: “When you do dance, I wish you a wave of the sea, that you might ever do nothing but that, move still, still so, and own no other function.” This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather Rives Fleming, Jr., who exemplified grace in every sense of the term, from his smooth dance lead to his selfless devotion to the people he loved. My grandmother Carol Saylor nurtured my curiosity about British literature, fantasy, and romance since before I could read; she set an inspiring example as a writer and has always remained one of my toughest critics. My parents, Bart and Conway Saylor and Bobby and Melinda King, supported this project in every possible way. I thank them above all for believing in me through times when I struggled to believe in myself. My brother Paul and sister Maggie Jo reminded me to relax and stick to the game plan. Thanks to the extended Saylor, Fleming, and Nichols families, and to the honorary Saylors: Cindy Carpenter, Joey Dorwart, Andrae Raffield, and Tom and Terese Shelton. vii I am grateful to the friends who keep me in good spirits: Corey Baum, Greg and Suzee Brooks, Ashley Alwyn Carrier, Elana Connor, Amy and Steve Connor, Marina Flider, Elizabeth Frye, Dan Hardick, Dave Harper, Hannah Harrison, Marisa Hinton, Mark Janchar, Liz Milano, Brett Ortler, Heather Parrish, Lito Porto, Rachel Schneider, Eva Sclippa, Connie Steel, Laney Sullivan, Sarah Sussman, Matt Tyler and Anna Metcalf, and Cleve and Rachel Wiese. I am fortunate to have Michael Roberts and Tom Lindsay as my Renaissance partners in crime. Andy Uzendoski lightened the burden of dissertation work by laughing and persevering with me every day; I could not have asked for a better companion in our shared space. I thank David Longoria for tending to me with extraordinary gentleness and compassion. Brianna Jewell kept me breathing and thought with me about the pains and pleasures of intimate connection with literature from the distant past. Chris Taylor reminded me that I am a writer, challenged me to articulate why these ideas matter, and cared for me unconditionally through personal and academic challenges. Thanks to Chris Ortiz y Prentice, who renews my excitement about ideas each time we talk, for his perceptive comments and contagious enthusiasm. Alexandra Gordon offered insightful conversation when I needed it and creature comforts when I grew too tired to form another thought. Lynn Cowles has given me too much to describe here, so I must simply thank her for being Lynn Cowles. My husband Bradley King offered unwavering encouragement, talked through ideas, reviewed drafts, and took me on restorative adventures with our dog Ishmael. I am grateful for his love, generosity, and patience throughout the dissertation process. viii My final acknowledgment goes out to Rebecca Cantos-Busch. Watching Rebecca carve stone has taught me about the power, commitment, and sensitivity that it takes to finish an overwhelming project. As a mother and artist, she knows how to embrace the transformative pain of bringing something new into the world. I thank her for sharing that wisdom, and so much else, with me. ix Penitential Experience in Renaissance Romance Sara Rives Saylor, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2015 Supervisor: Frank Whigham This dissertation analyzes English Renaissance representations of penitential experience: the emotions of guilt, shame, remorse, and regret, and the practices by which people respond to those emotions. I consider penitential episodes in Philip Sidney’s Arcadia (1590), Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590 and 1596), and William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (1611) alongside works of practical divinity that popularized Protestant penitential doctrines for lay readers, including sermons, treatises, and devotional handbooks. Penitence is traditionally understood as a means to an end: divine forgiveness, renewal as a better self, or reconciliation with those we have harmed. But my dissertation highlights episodes of frustrated, failed, and endless penitence, in which characters feel genuine remorse for their past wrongdoing and struggle to make amends for it but fear that their efforts can never be sufficient to reach the endpoints they seek. The romance texts in my study reveal the emotional strain and uncertainty wrought by the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, which radically altered traditional approaches to penitence. Reformers redefined penitence not as satisfaction for the debt of x sin, but as a radical self-transformation that only God could initiate. Historians have long recognized this shift as a crucial center of controversy in the period, but critics have only recently begun to consider how imaginative literature responded to it. I demonstrate that Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare confront the painful emotional consequences of Protestant doctrine and imagine alternative, more livable forms of penitence for secular life. They do so in part by staging penitential narratives in fictive pagan settings, where characters must confront their guilt without the aid of Christian ritual structures and consolations. Against the grain of a culture that valued divine salvation above all else and shifted responsibility for that salvation into the hands of an unknowable God, these authors restore attention to the practical and social dimensions of penitence as a lived experience within this world. xi Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................
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