With suspended disbelief as opted by Trill, in this thesis, I have examined and revisited Hutchinson and Lanyer’s professions of faith. I have attempted to look at their works from a religious...Show moreWith suspended disbelief as opted by Trill, in this thesis, I have examined and revisited Hutchinson and Lanyer’s professions of faith. I have attempted to look at their works from a religious angle and interpret their motivations to write their texts accordingly. In conclusion, both Lucy Hutchinson in Order and Disorder and Aemilia Lanyer in Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum produced a new Genesis narrative with emphasis on the female presence. In rewriting the Genesis narrative with such an emphasis, they acknowledged the religious suppression of the female gender by the existing patriarchal society and addressed the need for a revival in personal religious experiences for women. To achieve that, they wrote about their own personal religious experiences and the religious experiences of their characters as an example for other women. Both Lucy Hutchinson and Aemilia Lanyer have felt this calling to guide their female readers to a new understanding of submission leading to a personal responsibility for their soul's salvation. Hutchinson and Lanyer have similarly interpreted submission to be a total, personal subjection to God. In Order and Disorder, Hutchinson shows that the notion of Biblical submission does not equal the silencing of the female gender and does not come from a place of authority. Instead, submission comes from a place of humility and servitude towards God and others. In Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, Lanyer brings down patriarchal hierarchies as she calls her readers to a common subjection to God. In both Hutchinson and Lanyer’s accounts, there is no difference between men and women experiencing God’s grace. Lanyer underlines that both men and women have sinned and that both men and women can receive God’s grace. She uses the image of Christ as the Bridegroom and the Church as His Bride as the epitome of submission to one another. As Christ sacrificed himself for the Church, the Church should submit to Him an each other in return. Hutchinson confirms that submission to Christ results in a servitude towards others and an actively practiced faith. Furthermore, Hutchinson and Lanyer both describe the personal responsibility for women’s religious welfare. As described in the first chapter of this thesis on the Reformation, the religious landscape changed from a collective Christianity to an individual religious experience. As a result of this individualisation of faith, women are called to a personal, religious relationship with Christ. in Order and Disorder and in On the Principles of Religion, Hutchinson depicts how both she and her character Eve experienced salvation and transitioning from guilt into grace, and from grace into gratitude. In contrast, Lanyer interlaces the experiences of guilt, grace, and gratitude throughout her narrative. She engages the reader by showing that both men and women are subject to sin and need God’s grace. As a result, she depicts the reward of subjecting to God: as His Bride, the Church lives a joyful eternal life in His presence. At last, indeed, this thesis this thesis demonstrates that by writing and publishing their personal religious experiences, Lucy Hutchinson and Aemilia Lanyer guide their female readers to a new understanding of submission leading to a personal responsibility for their soul's salvation. Both Hutchinson and Lanyer present the way to salvation according the Reformed notions of guilt, grace, and gratitude.Show less
In royal (self-)representation, one recurring symbol is that of the phoenix. Symbolizing eternal life and hermaphroditism, the phoenix is connected to the theories of the body politic and the body...Show moreIn royal (self-)representation, one recurring symbol is that of the phoenix. Symbolizing eternal life and hermaphroditism, the phoenix is connected to the theories of the body politic and the body theatrical. The phoenix was used as a symbol by both male monarchs, such as James VI & I (1566-1625), Louis XIII (1601-1643), and Louis XIV (1638-1715), and female monarchs such as Elizabeth I (1533-1603) and Christina of Sweden (1626-1689). Elizabeth I’s use of the phoenix symbol is generally understood to refer to perpetual renewal and eternity,1 whereas Christina of Sweden’s use of the phoenix symbol is interpreted as a reference to hermaphroditism and the dual-gendered body politic. Scholarship on the French kings connects the phoenix symbolism to contemporary (political) anxieties over monarchial succession. To date, no systematic study has been made of the phoenix symbol as an expression of monarchial succession anxiety in early modern English society. This is curious, since the English monarchy has seen quite a number of problematic successions since the death of Henry VIII in 1547 and throughout the seventeenth century. The last decades of the reign of Elizabeth I, who died childless in 1603, is known to have caused succession anxiety. Therefore, this thesis aims to fill this gap in scholarship by performing a quantitative as well as a qualitative analysis of the occurrence of phoenix symbolism in early modern English literature and art, with an emphasis on the symbol’s use as an expression of succession anxiety. For the study of the occurrence of the phoenix symbol in early modern English literature, the Early English Books Online (EEBO) database has been used. A search on EEBO for the keyword ‘phoenix’ yielded 5810 hits in 2768 records/documents. The search results were manually sorted, excluding documents referring to the Elizabethan frigat ‘Phoenix’ and the Phoenix Theatre in Drury Lane, London. Ultimately, 2474 documents containing phoenix symbolism were identified (listed in Appendix A), of which 270 documents directly refer to either a monarch or to royal succession (listed in Appendix B). These results have been visualized in the graphs depicted throughout this thesis in order to clarify my arguments. For the qualitative analysis the most interesting and noteworthy EEBO search results have been selected for analysis. The quantitative and qualitative analyses presented in this thesis reveal that the phoenix symbol can be considered an expression of anxieties over succession. The phoenix symbol is not only used as a universal symbol of the monarchy, but also often served to specifically invoke the memory of the persona ficta and the (posthumously mythologised) reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Instead of being a general symbol of royalty, the phoenix symbol in early modern English society was often used to signify Queen Elizabeth I or her reign, which was hailed as the Golden Age as part of the rhetoric of nostalgia as well as her posthumous memorial cult. This strong connection to Elizabeth I caused the use of the phoenix symbol to soar in the first half of the seventeenth century. Ironically, this strong connection is also the main reason for the symbol’s downfall at the end of the century. Moreover, the Scientific Revolution and the demythologisation of the monarchy caused royal symbolism in general to lose its significance and its meaning by the start of the eighteenth century. The rise and fall of the phoenix symbol, spanning from the mid-sixteenth until the early eighteenth century, mirrors these socio-political developments.Show less
