Te Exculpation of the Desperate: Comforting the Desperate in England, 1580-1680 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY JEFFREY S. SQUIRES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY NABIL MATAR May 2018 Jeffrey S. Squires, 2018© i Acknowledgements In Troilus and Cressida, William Shakespeare writes that “Words pay no debts.” Te irony is clear: a playwright and poet who paid his monetary debts with words observes that language can only do so much to repay (or pay back) those we owe a non-monetary debt. Now, long afer I began writing this dissertation, I’ll use some words to repay the debts I owe to so many. I’d like to begin by thanking the University of Minnesota’s English Department who saw in me a potential doctor of philosophy. Tey offered me the opportunity to study literature, provided health insurance, and gave me the chance to live in beautiful Minnesota. It was through their educational, emotional, and financial support that this dissertation was possible. I’d likewise like to thank several other institutions housed at the University, specifically the Center for Early Modern History, Center for Early Modern Studies, and the James Ford Bell Library for broadening my understanding of history, challenging my methods, and funding my travel and research opportunities. Specifically I’d like to thank Dr. J.B. Shank and Dr. Marguerite Ragnow, who were essential to helping me to investigate historical methodology and to conduct archival research. I’d like to thank my committee members—Dr. John Watkins, Dr. Katherine Scheil, and Dr. Katharine Gerbner—for their dedication and energy. If not for their patience and willingness this dissertation would not have been possible. Likewise, I am thankful for those English faculty who read and commented on drafs while not serving on the committee itself, including but not limited to Dr. Rebecca Krug, Dr. Shirley Garner, and Dr. Tom Clayton. I came to the University of Minnesota in order to work with my advisor Dr. Nabil Matar, for whom I hold significant respect and admiration. His office has been a safe space, free of the intellectually isolating pressures of academia, and I am thankful for his ever-present dedication in reading countless drafs and tolerating innumerable hours of bickering over conformity and church politics. I will forever cherish our long discussion on the Middle East and his patience in listening to me unpack my complicated arguments. Goethe’s Mephistopheles remarks that the path forward always appears longer than the path back. Tis is nowhere truer than in the trenches of a Ph.D., where doubt, despair, and damnation lurk in the darkened underground of research. If not for my cohort, family, and friends, the path forward would have seemed insurmountable. While I am indebted to most of the graduate students in the department, I would like to personally thank Asa Olson, Marc Juberg (and Vivian Wauters), Jen-chou “Cliff” Liu (and I-Ching “Lillian” Wang and Violet), Amy Bolis, and Amanda Niedfeldt for their compassion, steadfastness, and overall friendship. Minnesota is the State of Hockey, and it was hockey and floorball that granted me catharsis for the pent up frustrations of writing. I am thankful to Minneapolis Floorball members John and Carly Irwin; Dim Pérusse and Yari Cabezas-Pérusse; and, the rest of the team for dragging me along to both regional and international competitions. I’d like to thank Kyle and Megan Kuczmarski for helping me to learn ice hockey, including driving me to buy equipment and playing midnight games. Like this dissertation, these activities will stay with me forever. I’d like to thank my parents, Francis and Leslie Squires, for helping to write stories, playing Dungeons & Dragons, going to Shakespeare performances, and talking about films. It was through these activities that I developed a love of the English discipline. I’m thankful to my family at Simmons Farm for their ongoing support, for treating me like a dusty-footed philosopher, and employing me throughout my early career. I also thank my family in State College, Pennsylvania for copious amounts of conversation, love, and beer. i I would especially like to thank my lifelong friends Jeremy Simmons and Zachary Wagle for listening to me complain and providing respite from work. I’d also like to thank Alexander Cheek—my silent companion in many public presentations—for his document design help, love of ii historical maps, and immeasurable support. Finally, I’d like to thank my wife and companion of over fifeen years, Kira Dreher. It is not hyperbole to say that, without her continual support, editing, and encouragement, this dissertation would not be possible. Together with our two daughters, Anza and Adaline, and our two salukis, Grete and Scoutie, she has been a beacon of hope to comfort my desperate dissertating. iii For my daughters, Anza Jane and Adaline Daniela iv Abstract In Te Exculpation of the Desperate, I explore how four prominent figures use despair to comfort the desperate, exploring how despair rhetorically functions throughout a largely religious discursive environment. Focusing on the years between 1580 and 1680, I show that despair allowed writers a rhetorical conceit by which they were able to assuage religious doubts, encourage emotional support, and argue doctrinal contentions. I primarily focus on religious despair, showing that these case studies are capable of simultaneously drawing on residual and emergent notions of a term in order to engage with on-going cultural, legal, and religious controversy. Each chapter focuses on a specific author, including William Shakespeare (Richard II), John Donne (Works), Robert Burton (Anatomy of Melancholy) and John Milton (Paradise Lost). v Table of Contents List of Figures vi I: “Above All Fears and Despairs:” An Introduction to Religious Despair. 1 i. Te History of a Desperate Idea: Despair, Puritans, and Predestination. ii. Te Exculpation of the Desperate: Preview of Dissertation. II: “At Enmity with Cozening Hope”: Death, Demise, and Despair in 32 Shakespeare’s Richard II. i. Reading History In Reverse ii. Shakespearean Despair iii. Te Desperate Lion iv. Te Queen’s Role in Solving Despair v. Te Desperate Slave vi. Revisionist History: Te King Reborn III: “Te Drowning Man and the Rainbow”: John Donne, Communal 102 Voyeurism, and the Desperate i. Te Critics of Despair: John Donne Scholarship ii. Te Pure Heart: Te Desperate Shadow in the Heart of Self-Scrutiny and Redemption iii. “Our Faith is not Perfect, nor our Hope is not Perfect”: Te Individual’s Suffering as a Snare for All iv. “…I cannot doubt of deliverance”: “Death’s Duel” and Life of the Grave Wormes. v. “Reproach no man”: Limitations of Judgment IV: “Quod cuiquam contigit, cuivis potest”: Robert Burton and the 167 Irrationality of Despair i. Burtonian Discursive Madness ii. Te Religious and Medical Divide: Representing Despair iii. Religious Principles and Legal Allowances iv. Legal and Social Restrictions to Suicide in London v. Robert Burton’s Suicide V: “Te bitter memory/ of what he was, what is, and what must be/ worse”: 235 Te Self-incriminating Despair Of Satan i. An Epic Hero incapable of Tragic Despair: Satan’s Role in reading Paradise Lost. ii. Satan’s Despair and his Redemptive Agency iii. Te Desperate Reader and the Tragic Angel iv. “Drive down to Chains of Darkness”: Te Death of the Will v. “Drive down to Chains of Darkness”: Te Intemporality of Despair and its effect on Redemptive Agency. v. “Drive down to Chains of Darkness”: Punitive Despair vii. Satan’s Utility: Te Temptation of Redemption (or Tormenting the Tormenter). Conclusion 297 Bibliography 300 vi List of Figures Figure 1: Francis Quarles, “Emblem IV,” Emblemes 65 Figure 2: Legal, Medical, and Religious Divide 185 Figure 3: Giotto di Bondone, “Capella degli Scrovegni: Desperatio” 214 1 Chapter I “Above All Fears and Despairs”1: An Introduction to Religious Despair Writing a year afer the Great London Fire of 1666, Owen Stockton explains that “No man should let such great judgments as this Fire and the late Pestilence pass away, without being some way bettered in his spiritual Estate by them.” A nonconformist minister, Stockton was interested in soothing the trauma lef by the fire and in explicating its anagogic purpose, that “the design [of said Fire] whereof is to instruct and excite both such as escaped, and such as suffered by this dreadful Fire, to make an holy use and a Christian improvement of this sad and solemn Providence, and also to quiet and comfort such as are troubled and cast down at the loss of their Estates.”2 Naturally, the suffering from the fire was great,3 but for the survivors, the eschatological effects were greater: Why did God punish England with fire? Why did he spare some and not others from the destruction? Fear is rooted deep within these questions, a dreadful need to find out what obscured wrong had warranted this punishment. Stockton’s goal, to be crass, is to put trauma and suffering to work both to promote Christian values (God’s involvement on earth) and suffering (God’s concern for the sufferer), but he is forced to engage with the realities of such catastrophic events as the London Fire, including the dangerous, long-lasting effects of despair. Catastrophes like the fire encouraged a sense of doom within the city, exacerbating the city’s occasional struggles with famines and pestilence, like the early bubonic outbreak of 1665, and we should not ignore how these communal woes impacted the individuals who survived 1 John Smith, “Te Excellency and Nobleness of True Religion,” In Select Discourses (London: J. Flesher, 1660), 426.