Marjorie Rubright

1. INTRODUCTION TO COURSE

Jackman Humanities Institute, “Location/Dislocation” Reception & Gallery Show. 4 p.m.

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2. SPIRITUALIZING EXILE: LANDS OF PROMISE AND PUNISHMENT

Some Protestant exiles adopted the view that they were the Chosen or Elect People of God continuing in the Covenant that God had made with Abraham (and as such either joining or even superceding the Jews). As one consequence, they took on Jewish history as their own, and turned to the narratives of Israel's flight from Egypt in order to make sense of their own difficulties (particularly when they were themselves in exile). What were the key points and themes of that narrative, and how might they guide self-consciousness and self-fashioning? How might flight/exile and deliverance/mission become two sides of a single coin?

The chapters of the Jewish Bible/Old Testament singled out here touch on some of the dynamics of being the Chosen People – great expectations, great punishments, and great rewards; the Koran chapters reinforce this in distinct ways. A common theme in all these traditions is that God blesses and God punishes, and being Chosen lays on as many burdens and obligations as it does opportunities. Being God's Instrument of Judgment on others entails also being the subject of God's judgment and punishment. How might this become a narrative framework for exiles? How do exile and imperialism interweave? How might the narrative shape debates within an exile community, and how might it shape that communities' dealings with others, whether these are the 'oppressors' in Egypt/Babylon or the 'aboriginals' who are occupying the 'Promised Land'. How does Bruce Feiler's book demonstrate the persistent strength of this topos, in what contexts does it recur, and does he address the idea of who 'owns' the story?

Moving on, the 'Babylonian Captivity', the return of the exiles, the rebuilding of Jerusalem under Nehemiah highlight another reality of Protestants' covenantal self-fashioning: the continuing reality of disobedience and punishment. How might this shape concepts of authority and corruption, obedience and dissent? Thinking ahead to the session on November 24, what social and political effects might result from this appropriation of 'Jewish' identity by Christians?

Primary Reading

Passages from OT/Jewish Bible: Exodus 1-2 (the setting); 6: 1-12 (God Promises Deliverance); 12-14 (Exodus from Egypt); 24 (Moses summoned up Mt. Sinai to receive law); 32 – 33:6 (Moses comes down); Numbers 14 (Israel's Complaint & God's Judgment); Deuteronomy 7-9 (Israel's Imperialist Charter); Joshua 3 (Crossing the Jordan); Joshua 6 (Jericho); 2 Chronicles 36 (Babylonian Captivity); Nehemiah 1-2 (Return to Jerusalem); 4-6 (Rebuilding the Wall & the Social Contract)

Passages from the Koran: 26:10-64, 28:1-88, 33:7-27, 43:43-89, 57:12-29

Secondary Reading

H. Oberman, “Europa Afflicta: The Reformation of the Refugees” in H. Oberman, John Calvin and the Reformation of the Refugees. Geneva: Droz, 2009.

N. Terpstra, “Imagined Communities of the Reformation.” Sixteenth Century Journal 40/1 (2009): 222-25.

Secondary Reviews

B. Feiler, America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story (New York: Morrow, 2009)

B. Schmidt, Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World (Cambridge: 2002)

C. Kidd, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600-2000. Cambridge University Press: 2006. Chapters 2 & 3 [for a parallel use/interpretation of scriptural texts in early modern period]

H. Fisch, Jerusalem and Albion: The Hebraic Theme in Seventeenth Century Literature (New York: 1964)

S. Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. (New York: 1987): Ch. 2 “Patriotic Scripture”

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3. THEORIZING EXILE & MIGRATION: FROM THE ARCHIVES, THE STAGE, & BEYOND EUROCENTRIC PERSPECTIVES

Location: Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library

Guest Speakers: Noam Lior, Ph.D. Candidate, Graduate Drama Centre, & Director, A Christian Turn’d Turk, Dr. Scott Schofield, INKE Postdoctoral Fellow in the History and Future of the Book, Dr. Srilata Raman, Professor, Centre for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto

Secondary Reading

Please note: Three short readings will be posted to Blackboard following the workshop. In addition, please read:

Jacques Derrida, "On Cosmopolitanism” in Stephen Cairns, ed., Drifting: Architecture and Migrancy (Routledge, 2004)

Stephanie Dufoix, “Introduction” & “Chapter 1. What is a Diaspora?” in Diasporas (U California, 2008)

Stuart Hall, “Culture, Identity and Diaspora” in Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader (Wiley-Blackwell, 2003)

Marjorie Rubright, "An Urban Palimpsest: Migrancy, Architecture, and the Making of an Anglo-Dutch Royal Exchange." Dutch Crossing 33.1 (2009): 23-43

Edward Said, “Reflections on Exile” in Reflections on Exile & Other Essays (Harvard UP, 2002) pp. 173-86.

Secondary Reviews

Christopher D'Addario, Exile and Journey in Seventeenth-Century Literature. (Cambridge UP, 2007).

Margaret C Jacob, Strangers Nowhere in the World : The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006)

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4. STRANGE FAMILIARS: ENGLAND’S INTERNAL ALIEN/NATION

“England is always discovered elsewhere, defined by the encounter with the Other,” writes Michael Neill in a 1994 article on England’s relations with Ireland. For nearly a decade, Neill’s thesis held sway as literary critics and historians affirmed the sense that Englishness was defined primarily against “otherness,” even when that otherness was located within the English realm with the increased population of foreigners, exiles, and strangers from abroad. More recently, literary scholarship has reconsidered the role of the representation of aliens in forging ideas of Englishness, particularly on the English public stage. Critics increasingly stress the ways in which representations of London’s aliens were “confused” with ideas of Englishness (Kermode). A parallel shift has happened among historians who once argued for the xenophobic bias of the English people but have more recently begun to ask whether xenophobia is an epithet gone “too far” (Goose).

How do two of the first English “city comedies” (Englishmen for my Money & Shoemaker’s Holiday)—plays that reflect on the real and imagined aspects of London city life —respond to Nigel Goose’s question about English xenophobia? Do the plays’ conclusions affirm or complicate ideas of English xenophobia? Are these plays portraits of early modern cosmopolitanism, anxious dramatizations of the threat of miscegenation, or both? Why might dramatists stage “alien confusion” (Kermode) for English audiences in a period when London was absorbing exiles, refugees, and aliens? If the stage was dramatizing the ease by which aliens could impersonate the English—and vice versa, as in the case of Dekker’s Shoemaker’s Holiday—what messages was the theater producing about English identity in the context of exchange with aliens and exiles from abroad?

Both plays explore English engagement with aliens, strangers, and exiles in the context of London’s commercial and sexual marketplaces. How do the plays convey the relation of marriage to commercial exchange and cultural identity? Can the alien/exile assimilate? Both plays dramatize the linguistic alterity of the alien (Smith). How does language come to police and produce the boundaries of Englishness?

Primary Reading (SELECT ONE OF THE FOLLOWING TWO CITY COMEDIES)

Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1600)

William Haughton, Englishman for my Money (1598, quarto)

Secondary Reading

Llyod Edward Kermode, Aliens and Englishness in Elizabethan Drama (Cambridge UP, 2009) Introduction, pp. 1-22; Chapter 5, pp. 119-44 Postscript 150-54

Nigel Goose, "Xenophobia in Elizabethan England and Early Stuart England: An Epithet Too Far?" pp. 110-35

Secondary Reviews

Immigrants in Tudor and Early Stuart England. Eds. Nigel Goose and Lien Luu. (Sussex Academic Press, 2005), “Introduction” pp. 1-38 & Lien Luu, “Natural-Born Versus Stranger-Born Subjects: Aliens and Their Status in Elizabethan London," pp. 57-75

Jean Howard, Introduction,” Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy, 1598-1642. (U. Pennsylvania, 2007), pp. 1-28 & chapter(s) of your choice

Colin Kidd. "Identity before Identities: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Historian." History and Nation. Ed. Julia Rudolph. (Bucknell University Press, 2006) pp. 9-44

Emma Smith, "So Much English by the Mother: Gender, Foreigners, and the Mother Tongue in William Haughton's Englishmen for My Money." Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 13 (2001): 165-81

Alan Stewart, ""Euery Soyle to Mee Is Naturall": Figuring Denization in William Haughton's Englishmen for My Money." Renaissance Drama 35 (2006): 55-81.

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5. LOCATION & DISLOCATION IN EARLY MODERN RELIGION

Secondary Reading

B. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflicts and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe. (Harvard UP: 2007): Ch. 1-4

Secondary Reviews

N. Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (2004)

D. Coleman, Creating Christian Granada: Society and Religious Culture in an Old World Frontier City (1492-1600) (Cornell: 2003); H. Oberman, John Calvin and the Reformation of the Refugees. Geneva: Droz, 2009

E. Natalie Rothman, “Becoming Venetian: Conversion and Transformation in the Seventeenth Century Mediterranean.” Mediterranean Historical Review 21/1 (2006): 39-75.

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6. MIGRANTS' MISHAPS: PIRATES, PAPISTS, & TURKS

None of the figures we will read about this week– Davies, Rawlins, or Hasleton – sets off on his travels for reasons of religious identity, yet each makes religion a fundamental theme in the narrative of their subsequent travails. How does religion figure in their self-fashioning – when is it central or peripheral, and what and how does it frame and define? To what extent might they be appealing to a particular audience when they do this, and to what extent might this also be an example of dawning self-consciousness? How do accounts like this shape the Protestant Nationalism which becomes so characteristic of the British self-definition? Thinking of the 22 September seminar on 'Spiritualizing Exile" how do authors like Hasleton turn a captivity narrative into a pilgrimage/martyrological narrative?

What do you think of R.C. Davis's claim that we need to take narratives like this at face value? How does this decision shape his own narrative, and to what effect? How are the Italian experiences quite different from the English, and how are they similar? How do these experiences develop different political & religious responses and a different literature?

Primary Reading(SELECT ONE OF THE FOLLOWING [AVAILABLE ON EEBO]):

William Davies, barber-surgion of London, A true relation of the travailes and most miserable captiuitie of William Dauies, barber-surgion of London, vnder the Duke of Florence (1614). STC / 830:14

Richard Hasleton, Strange and wonderfull things. Happened to Richard Hasleton, borne at Braintree in Essex, in his ten yeares trauailes in many forraine countries. Penned as he deliuered it from his ovvne mouth (1595) STC (2nd ed.) / 12925 [36] p. Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery Reel position: STC / 546:16

John Rawlins, The famous and wonderfull recoverie of a ship of Bristoll, called the Exchange, from the Turkish Pirates of Argier With the vnmatchable attempts and good successe of Iohn Rawlins, pilot in her, and other slaues; who in the end with the slaughter of about 40. of the Turkes and Moores, brought the ship into Plimouth the 13. of February last; with the captaine a renegado, and 5. Turkes more, besides the redemption of 24. men, and one boy, from Turkish slauerie. (1622) STC (2nd ed.) / 20769 [40] p. Bodleian Library, STC / 1115:03

Secondary Reading

R.C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

Secondary Reviews

N.Z. Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth Century Muslim Between Worlds (2005)

R.L. Kagan & P.D. Morgan (eds), Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism. (Johns Hopkins UP: 2008)

Chapters 7-10 on Identity and Religion N. Matar, Britain & Barbary, 1589-1689. (2006)

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7. CONVERSION TEMPTATIONS

Guest Instructor: Noam Lior, Director of A Christian Turn’d Turk

Throughout this term we have been exploring the ways in which early modern Europe was shaped by the social, political, and personal dramas of religious conversion. On the stages of London’s public theaters, religious conversion was dramatized as Englishmen “turned Turk,” and Jews & Moors were electively and forcibly converted to Christianity. Time and again the stage explored the problems that arise when one’s religious identity confronts desire for the religious other, and the mercantile opportunities the Mediterranean and Ottoman other represented. A Christian Turn’d Turk dramatizes the temptations and consequences of religious conversion for its English audience. Conversions from Christian to Turk were inflected by other tropes of conversion (good to evil, virgin to whore, saved to apostate, Englishman to renegade, to mention only a few). Many of these tropes intersect with ideas about gender and sexuality too.

In what ways does the play sanitize, glorify, and/or demonize conversion temptations? What tropes of conversion animate the drama of Christian Turn’d Turk and how do these tropes reveal the intersections of religious identity, national or regional identifications, gender, and ethnic or racial kind? The play presents a range of counterfeit conversions. Which kind of conversion (gender, religious, nation-affiliation, etc.) can be counterfeited? What kind of conversion seems out of reach? The world of this play is richly international: the French, Dutch, English, and Tunisians interact in a space where Christians, Jews, and Muslims engage in a network of commercial as well as sexual exchange. In what ways does the play figure “migrant mishaps” differently than the primary sources we read last week? How might we weigh plays together with other historical materials as sources for the study of early modern migration, exile, and diaspora?

Primary Reading

Robert Daborne, A Christian Turn’d Turk, in Three Turk Plays. Ed. Dan Vitkus. (Columbia UP, 2000) Ballads relating to Ward & Dankiser. Included in the appendix of Vitkus’ Three Turk Plays.

Secondary Reading

Dan Vitkus: Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570-1630. (Palgrave, 2003); Selections:—“Chapter 1. Before Empire: England, Alterity, and the Mediterranean Context,” pp. 1-24 & “Chapter 5. Scenes of Conversion: Piracy, Apostasy, and the Sultan’s Seraglio,” pp. 107-62

Jonathan Burton, Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama, 1579-1624. (U. Delaware, 2005). Selections—“Chapter 3. A Turk Turned Christian,” pp. 130-38 & “Chapter 5. Christians, Turks, and Jews on the Early Modern Stage,” pp. 196-219.

Secondary Reviews

Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600-1850. (Anchor Books, 2004). Esp. part 1: Mediterranean

Matthew Dimmock, New Turkes: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England. (Ashgate 2005)

A. J. Hoenselaars, Images of Englishmen and Foreigners in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries : A Study of Stage Characters and National Identity in English Renaissance Drama, 1558-1642. (Associated University Presses, 1992)

Dan Vitkus. "Turning Turk in Othello: The Conversion and Damnation of the Moor." Shakespeare Quarterly 48.2 (1997): 145-76.

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8. IDENTITIES AS PALIMPSESTS: THE TAINT OF THE “ALIEN” & DISCUSSION OF “IMPERIAL STATES”

In “the first and only story of mass deportation of people from England,” Jews were officially banned in the year 1290. The specter of Jewishness nonetheless continued to inform ideas of English race, ethnicity, nation, religion, as well as social, political and legal tolerance. Despite their expulsion, Jews remained in England—both literally and figuratively. Jews who remained or later entered England were not, as in other places in Europe, subject to violent attacks, forced to convert, or sequestered in ghettos. Why, then, might Shakespeare have penned a “comedy” of Christian/Jewish relations set in Venice, where Jews faced a very different socio-political reality? In what ways did the Venetian context hold a mirror up to England’s own questions about Anglo-Jewish relations, Jewish diaspora, religious exile, and the state’s legal response to the “aliens” living within?

James Shapiro argues that Shakespeare’s “alien” Shylock cannot be understood independent of the context of the social tensions generated by aliens and their economic practices in London in the mid-1590s. While Portia enters the play’s courtroom scene and asks, “Which is the merchant here? Which the Jew?” literary critics have proposed that for London audiences these questions would have resonated as “Which is the Spaniard here?” (Griffin) or, “Which is the Dutchman here? And which the Englishman?” (Harris). How does the Jew become a figure by which the English engaged questions regarding London’s other aliens? In what ways is Jewishness particularly open to this kind of interpretive fluidity (Campos)? Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice dramatizes two ‘religious’ conversions—Jessica’s adoption of her husband’s Christian faith and Shylock’s forced conversion to Christianity. The critics this week explore both conversions as deeply troubling, imperfect, even, as Adelman suggests, impossible. The conversion that appears on its face “religious” turns out to be inflected by ideas of “racial” and civic differences that perplex fantasies of conversion. Considering today’s readings, how did tropes of ‘blood,’ ‘begetting’ and ‘taint,’ sharpen religious boundaries? How did they enable fantasies of religious and racial crossings? To what extent is the possibility of conversion linked to gender?

Finally, this week we also read an anonymously authored “Dutch Church Libel” that was pinned to the door of London’s French Church in 1593. How would Londoner’s have made sense of the charges that “Your Machiavellian merchant spoils the state…and like the Jews you eat us up as bread?” How do we weigh evidence like the “Libel” together with plays, and social history? In what ways does the language of the libel reveal how tropes from the stage travel into the popular discourse of London daily life?

Primary Reading

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice “The Dutch Church Libel” (reprinted in Will Harris’s chapter)

Secondary Reading

James Shapiro, Shakespeare and the Jews (Columbia UP, 1996) Selections—“Introduction” pp. 1-12 & “Race, Nation, Alien?” pp. 167-193.

Janet Adelman, "Her Father's Blood: Race, Conversion, and Nation in The Merchant of Venice" Representations 81 (2003): 4-30.

Jonathan Will Harris, Sick Economies: Drama, Mercantilism, and Disease in Shakespeare’s England (U. Pennsylvania, 2004). Selection—“Taint and Usury: Gerard Malynes, The Dutch Church Libel, The Merchant of Venice” pp. 52-82.

Secondary Reviews

Edmund Campos, "Jews, Spaniards, and Portingales: Ambiguous Identities of Portuguese Marranos in Elizabethan England." English Literary History (2002): 599-616

Eric Griffin, English Renaissance Drama and the Specter of Spain: Ethnopoetics and Empire (U. Pennsylvania, 2009); Selections—Chapter 4, “Chapter 4. Marlowe Among the Machevills” pp. 97-103 & “Chapter 5. Shakespeare’s Comical History” pp. 135-167.

Suggested Reading

John Michael Archer, Citizen Shakespeare: Freemen and Aliens in the Language of the Plays. (Palgrave, 2005) Introduction.

Colin Kidd, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600-2000. (Cambridge UP, 2006) Selections—“Preface. Race in the Eye of the beholder”; “Introduction. Race as a scriptural problem”

“Chapter 1. Race and Religious Orthodoxy in the Early Modern Era” pp. 1-78 Andrew Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities (Oxford UP, 1986), pp. 291-92.

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9. BEAUTIFUL LOSERS: TRIALS, MARTYRDOM, AND MYTHMAKING

Some exiles didn't 'make it', and their long and difficult periods on the road ended with a short and violent death at the stake. Martyrdom was another of the dominant metaphors through which religious exiles framed and aimed to make sense of their experiences, and while Protestants may have thrown out intercessory saints in their reformation of doctrine, they embraced martyrs as exemplary saints worthy of particular praise. How did Catholics and the various branches of Protestants frame exile – what similarities and differences marked their approaches, and how did each tradition work early and hard to develop a literature? What tropes and historical continuities informed each tradition? Who was this literature directed to, and how did they use it? How reliable might it be as historical documentation?

Brad Gregory claims in various places (see particularly the first section of Ch. 4 on “The Poverty of Theory”) that post-modern readings fail to take Reformation martyrologies seriously, and that they instead 'explain away' their fundamental truths; he goes further to claim that modern critics have difficulty accepting early modern religion on its own terms. Assess, evaluate, respond: is there an argument here, or just a straw man or red herring? Does Covington's analysis bear out his concerns in any way? With attention to his Ch. 8 and to Foxes Martyrologies, how would you assess his own methodology?

Primary Reading

John Foxe, Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Version edited by John. N. King as Foxe's Book of Martyrs: Select Narratives (Oxford UP: 2009)

Read accounts of: William Tyndale, Anne Askew, Hugh Latimer & Nicholas Ridley, Rose Allen and the Other Colchester Martyrs, the Islington Martyrs. T.J. van Braght, The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenceless Christians. (1999)

Read account of death of Michael Sattler [available online at: www.anabaptists.org/history/sattler/html]

Secondary Reading

Brad Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe. (Harvard UP, 1999)

Selections—All of Ch. 1, Ch 4, pp 97-105, Ch 8, Conclusion

S. Covington, "Paratextual Strategies in Thieleman van Braght's Martyr's Mirror" Book History 9 (2006): 1-29.

Secondary Reviews

Loades, D.M., John Foxe: An Historical Perspective (Asghate: 1999)

N. Shepardson, Burning Zeal: The Rhetoric of Martyrdom and the Protestant Community in Reformation France, 1520-1570. (Lehigh UP: 2007).

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