TEXTS TO CONDEMNE US A study of the prose works of Thomas Nashe Rob Shooter ProQuest Number: 10609970 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10609970 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 TEXTS TO CONDEMNE US: THE PROSE WORKS OF THOMAS NASHE Chapter title Page number PREFACE 1 TABLE OF ABBREVIATIONS 3 1 NASHE'S MISSING THEME: THE VICE-HERO 4 2 THE RIGHT USE OF AUNCIENT POETRIE 16 3 THE RULE OF THE TONGUE 28 4 TEXTS TO CONDEMNE US 41 5 PIERCE PENILESSE - THE DEMOCRATIC TEXT 53 6 THE GROTESQUE IN PIERCE PENILESSE 75 7 FAULTS ESCAPED IN PRINTING 90 8 THE ANTEROOM OF TORTURE 111 9 THE LORD IS KNOWN IN EXECUTING JUDGEMENT 129 10 CHRISTS TEARES OVER JERUSALEM 150 11 THE FLYTING 165 12 THE INVENTION OF THE ENEMY 189 13 THE PROFIT OF THE ENEMY 206 14 THE MARTYRDOM OF THE SELF 221 15 CONCLUSIONS 235 NOTES 241 BIBLIOGRAPHY 259 PREFACE Texts To Condemne Us, a study of the prose works of Thomas Nashe, was written over a period of four years, off and on, between 1985 and 1989. It tries to take account of all the previous critical work on Nashe that I was aware of, but was substantially complete before the appearance of Lorna Hutson's Thomas Nashe In Context (Oxford 1989). Had I the benefit of that books's thorough-going research into the socio-economic background to Nashe's work I would, perhaps, have been able to deepen and broaden some aspects of my own argument. I do not think, however, that I would substantially have altered its lines of enquiry and conclusions, although I could not have been quite as didactic about the 'failings' of early criticism in my first chapter ! In fact, Professor Hutson's analysis of the ways in which economic pressures led Elizabethan writers to propagate a 'generall reformation of manners', her analysis of polemic against drink, gaming, play-going and sartorial ostentation as a general condemnation of 'unthrifty consumption', stengthens the argument of my first few chapters. We agree that Nashe's abandonment of 'the protestant-humanist notion of learning for profit' can be seen: even while he was busy sifting the provident profits of poetry from its licentious abuse in the didactic Anatomie Of Abuses <1 assume that Hutson refers to The Anatomy of Absurdity here> Where I borrow the phrase 'the polemic western self' in chapter 3 to describe the authorial and moral self-possession which Nashe' s later writings question and reconstruct, I may have used Hutson's argument that poetry was seen as the educator of the 'vir virtutis - the man in full possession of himself'. The instructive text, praised in The Anatomie of Absurdity'creates in its readers the capacity for self-government' - a key concept in my analysis of Nashe's deviation from his polemic context. In writing this thesis I have, however, made extensive use of Mikhael Bakhtin's work on the carnival elements in Rabelais, and of Foucault's analysis of pre-capitalist economies of power and punishment in Discipline And Punish: The Birth Of The Prison (tr. Alan Sheridan, London 1977). Bakhtin's excitement of discovery in Rabelais And His World (tr. Helene Iswolsky, Cambridge Mass. 1968) furnished me with an important - 1 - Preface framework on which to hang my own shabby architecture. The thesis as a whole, but particularly the chapters on Pierce Penilesse, The Unfortunate Traveller and Lenten Stuff, depend on the Bakhtinian notion of carnival. From Bakhtin I assume the mediaeval existence of a carnival anti-world of all things turned upside down. This world is prodigal, grotesque, spendthrift (in Hutson’s vocabulary), egalitarian and immensely productive. It is bound within strict limits but is itself a world of limitless interiors. It celebrates the suspension of all hierarchical rank, priveliges, norms and prohibitions and is a temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and the established order. Its characteristic mode of understanding the world is through laughter and its corporeal vocabulary of grotesques and freaks tentatively suggests that man's condition is time without eternity. Foucault's philosophy convinces by the elegance of its insight. I have assimilated his analysis of the public execution, constituting its own egalitarian rituals of performance and affording a limited role to the people, to insights derived from Bakhtin. I am particularly indebted to Discipline And Punish: The Birth Of The Prison for my analysis of narrative and torture in The Unfortunate Traveller, the most fascinating of all Nashe's works. With the help of Discipline And Punish I was able to amend the Bakhtinian analysis of carnival with which I began the thesis. In Nashe's texts, the grotesque mocks and is sponsored by the official world of hierarchical discipline. Within its lawlessness, the aegis of the prince is clearly visible and its laughter is always accompanied by a punitive violence. With the help of these theoretical constructs, I have tried to suggest a specific order and pattern, giving birth to Nashe's grotesque imagination, where previously there was thought to be only the monsters of 'themelessness'. No less important to the construction and eventual completion of this thesis was the patience and enthusiasm of my supervisor, Dr Henry Woudhuysen. I would like to thank him for ideas, comments and practical advice on the best use of my time. I would also like to thank my wife, Dinah Pattison, for negotiations conducted on my behalf with the Amstrad PCW 8256 on which this work was written, edited and printed. - 2 - TABLE OF ABBREVIATIONS 1 In quoting Nashe’s texts I have referred in all places to Ronald B.McKerrow's The Works Of Thoms Nashe, originally published in 5 volumes between 1904 and 1910, revised by F.P.Wilson in and published in Oxford, 1958. The first figure refers to the number of the volume, the second to the page number: for example, 1; 252. Quotations from McKerrow retain original spellings and punctuation, except that modern typographical conventions are observed in the use of i and j and u and v. 2 Bracketed numbers in smaller type refer to notes. 3 The notes refer to a number of publications by their initials. These are: AJP: American Journal Of Philology BJS: British Journal Of Sociology EIC: Essays In Criticism ELH: English Literary History ELR: English Literary Renaissance ES: English Studies HLQ: Huntingdon Library Quarterly JEGP: Journal Of English And Germanic Philology JELH: Journal Of English Literary History JHI: Journal Of The History Of Ideas JNT: Journal Of Narrative Technique JWCI: Journal Of The Warburg And Courtauld Institutes MLN: Modem Language Notes MLR: Modem Language Review NQ: Notes And Queries PMLA: Publications Of The Modem Language Association Of America RES: Review Of English Studies SEL: Studies In English Literature SP: Studies in Philology SS: Shakespeare Survey SSF: Studies In Short Fiction TLS: Times Literary Supplement YES: Yearbook Of English Studies ns after a journal abbreviation stands for new series. - 3 - 1 NASHE'S MISSING THEME: THE VICE-HERO i Paradoxically, though Nashefs pamphlets are commercial literature, they come very close to being, in another way, 'pure' literature: literature which is, as nearly as possible, without a subject. In a certain sense of the verb 'say1, if asked what Nashe 'says', we should have to reply, Nothing. (1) C.S.Lewis's weighty judgement established a dominant tradition in criticism of Nashe's works. G.R.Hibbard's ground-breaking study depicted a writer fascinated by word-games, a minor author of some genius who never fully realised his talent, for 'a work such as Lenten Stuff has no significance outside itself'. (2) The biographer of this Nashe, Charles Nicholl, admits to disappointment that 'so much talent' is 'squandered on essentially negative utterance'. (3) The brilliance of the writing is widely recognised, but an inability to reconcile a 'commonly felt unity of mood and attitude' with 'an inexplicable themelessness' has been felt by most critics. (4) The Nashe of this dominant tradition is unable to train his gift for language to the service of narrative meaning: the ostensible theme is merely an occasion for the performance. (5) Nashe consciously 'let style replace argument in his writing' for his 'linguistic virtuosity' could not disguise the fact that he 'has very little to say'. Therefore, 'his interest...lies almost entirely in his style'. (6) Neil Rhodes' study of the grotesque in Nashe's works usefully places the author in a wider cultural and social context, but it does not formally break with Lewis's emphasis. Despite the missing theme the language displays a 'unity of mood and attitude', a peculiarly Elizabethan, 'coalescence of contrary images of the flesh: indulged, abused, purged and damned'. (7) Nashe's 'alertness to the possibilities of metaphor' is fully recognised and it is his exploitation of the possibilities of language which forms 'the essential subject matter of the prose'. (8) More recently, Jonathon Crewe has turned from the criticism of the prose to the undeclared motives behind the critic's 'judicial severity’. Nashe's missing theme is now made the conscious strategy of an anti-world - 4 - Nashe's Missing Theme distinguished 'by its simultaneous antagonism and parasitism upon an absent ideal'.