The Destruction of Jerusalem in Early Modern English Literature
Cambridge University Press, 9/16/2015
EAN 9781107113275, ISBN10: 110711327X
Hardcover, 278 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm
Language: English
This book explores the fall of Jerusalem and restores to its rightful place one of the key explanatory tropes of early modern English culture. Showing the importance of Jerusalem's destruction in sermons, ballads, puppet shows and provincial drama of the period, Beatrice Groves brings a new perspective to works by canonical authors such as Marlowe, Nashe, Shakespeare, Dekker and Milton. The volume also offers a historically compelling and wide-ranging account of major shifts in cultural attitudes towards Judaism by situating texts in their wider cultural and theological context. Groves examines the continuities and differences between medieval and early modern theatre, London as an imagined community and the way that narratives about Jerusalem and Judaism informed notions of English identity in the wake of the Reformation. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this volume will interest researchers and upper-level students of early modern literature, religious studies and theatre.
Introduction
Part I. The Destruction of Jerusalem in Early Modern Literary Culture
1. From Roman to Jew
Josephus, the Josippon and the destruction of Jerusalem in early modern culture
2. Continuity and change
staging Jerusalem and staging 'the Jew'
3. Preachers and players
the sack of Jerusalem from pulpit and stage
Part II. The Destruction of Jerusalem in Early Modern Texts
4. Marlowe's Jew of Malta and the destruction of Jerusalem
5. The siege of Jerusalem and subversive rhetoric in Shakespeare's King John
6. The fall of Jerusalem and the rise of a metropolis
Nashe's Christ's tears over Jerusalem, Dekker's plague pamphlets and maternal cannibalism in early modern London
7. The New Jerusalem
Josephan portents and Milton's Paradise Lost
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.