Graduation Year

2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

English

Major Professor

Nicole Guenther Discenza, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Jay Zysk, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Anne Latowsky, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Sara Munson Deats, Ph.D.

Keywords

Charity, Biblical drama, Piers Plowman, Shakespeare, Marlowe

Abstract

The religious Reformation in England heralded significant changes in Christian theology, clerical and lay practices, and textual interpretation. These sweeping changes encompassed nearly all avenues of intellectual thought, and debates ranged from whether or not religious texts should be written in the traditional latin or the vernacular, thereby determining whether interpretive authority remained within the clergy or became available to laypersons, to arguments over very specific aspects of theological doctrine, such as the substantive nature of the Eucharist. These debates were not confined among Church officials; politicians, monarchs, commoners, and literary authors engaged in these discussions and had been doing so for some time. Before the Reformation officially took hold across Europe, authors in the Middle Ages began writing in the vernacular, debates over doctrine had already begun (Wycliffe, mystical writers, etc.), and theological discussions were already taking place within literary fiction. This dissertation will explore how one particular change in Christian theological doctrine, the nature of charity (caritas), was expressed in literature across the Reformation divide, from the later Middle Ages into the Tudor period. As the theological definition of charity shifted from a traditional Catholic view of works to a reformed view of introspection, intent, and good will, representations of charity in literature shifted in a similar way.

While scholars such as James William Brodman and Eamon Duffy have provided extensive studies on charity and religious practices in medieval history and culture, emerging scholarship has begun to make connections between these fields and the literature of the time. In Sanctifying Signs, David Aers explores how literature of the later middle ages instructs and reflects traditional and popular theology and piety, and James Simpson crosses the periodic bridge by connecting religious and cultural contexts to literature of the later middle ages and early modern period in Reform and Cultural Revolution. Other scholars, such as Sarah Beckwith and Eliza Burher, have also connected literature and drama of the later middle ages to their religious contexts. Similarly, in Liturgy and Literature in the Making of Protestant England, Timothy Rosendale explores how The Book of Common Prayer influenced political, national, religious, and literary discourse in early modern England. I will build on these studies by exploring how the concept of charity in particular evolved in late medieval and early modern literary texts. I will chart the development of the concept of charity from pre-Christian antiquity through the middle ages to the debates between traditional and reformed thinkers during the Reformation. Then, I will analyze the shift in this concept in exemplary literary texts: The York biblical plays, William Langland’s Piers Plowman, Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, and Shakespeare’s plays. In each chapter, I will draw on supplementary texts and other major works of each period, in addition to these representative texts, to provide a fuller view of the concept of charity within literature.

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