Fictional Texts, Imaginary Performances, and Historiographic Desire in Renaissance England

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorCampana, Josephen_US
dc.creatorChoate, Evanen_US
dc.date.accessioned2020-04-27T18:59:35Zen_US
dc.date.available2021-05-01T05:01:12Zen_US
dc.date.created2020-05en_US
dc.date.issued2020-04-23en_US
dc.date.submittedMay 2020en_US
dc.date.updated2020-04-27T18:59:35Zen_US
dc.description.abstractWhy do we care about the past? How does caring about the past enable historicism? This project answers such questions by attending to the methodological innovations of Reformation historians as they were refined and literalized in the English Renaissance theater. We cannot understand the productive tensions among history, desire, and subjectivity that persist to this day without understanding the reciprocal developments in dramatic form and historiographic method that emerged from the crucible of the Reformation. Sixteenth-century Protestant historians such as John Foxe both recount and provoke a desire that produces history as a series of performances in which we are all simultaneously readers, writers, audiences, and actors. The productive tension between the objectivity that Foxe wants from history and his awareness of the inherent subjectivity of actually producing history is a discursive engine. Foxe uses the theater as the central metaphor for his historiography, and his reorientation of popular conceptions of the past was central to the rapid innovations in dramatic form in Renaissance England. The late-Elizabethan theater, unique in sixteenth-century Europe, sold plays both as performances and as printed texts. The need to appeal to both audiences and readers ensures that the question of why we should care about history is baked into the history play as a commercial genre. The remarkable metatheatricality of late-Elizabethan history plays literalize the methodological gestures of Reformation historiography. They consistently stage the histories of their own production and reception in ways that frame many of the cruxes that continue to occupy scholars today. Criticism is not distinct from the representational dynamics it studies. Rather, modern scholars participate in an ongoing performance of textual proliferation marked not by exhilaration or satisfaction, but by frustration, boredom, and paranoia. Far from blunting the appeal of history, our persistence in spite of the manifest impossibility of satisfaction attests to the continued power of historiographic desire to produce vertiginous sequences of imaginary performances and fictional texts.en_US
dc.embargo.terms2021-05-01en_US
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen_US
dc.identifier.citationChoate, Evan. "Fictional Texts, Imaginary Performances, and Historiographic Desire in Renaissance England." (2020) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/108378">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/108378</a>.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/108378en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.en_US
dc.subjectRenaissance dramaen_US
dc.subjectReformationen_US
dc.subjecthistoriographyen_US
dc.subjectdesireen_US
dc.subjecttheateren_US
dc.subjectShakespeareen_US
dc.subjecthistoryen_US
dc.subjectJohn Foxeen_US
dc.subjectMarloween_US
dc.titleFictional Texts, Imaginary Performances, and Historiographic Desire in Renaissance Englanden_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.type.materialTexten_US
thesis.degree.departmentEnglishen_US
thesis.degree.disciplineHumanitiesen_US
thesis.degree.grantorRice Universityen_US
thesis.degree.levelDoctoralen_US
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophyen_US
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
CHOATE-DOCUMENT-2020.pdf
Size:
1.45 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
PROQUEST_LICENSE.txt
Size:
5.84 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
LICENSE.txt
Size:
2.6 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download
Collections
Rice University Theses and Dissertations