A reverence for books: the sacrament of material text, 1558-1649
Date
2016
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This dissertation argues that the material structure of the book hosted various sacramental relationships revised by the English Reformation. Drawing from theologians like John Calvin, Theodore Beza and William Perkins, it argues for three kinds of Reformed relationships between user and materiality: similitude between body and book, conjunction of human and spiritual presences on the printed page, and the transformative narratives that embed readers in the book. Plays like Shakespeare’s Henry VI and Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster imagine ink blotting, the permanence of print, and typographical error as similitudes of human penance through which characters wrestle to find absolution. Printed marriage masques borrow rhetoric from the wedding rite, reimagining the wedding as a conjunction of spiritual, imaginary, and human presences on the masque page. Finally, illuminated editions of the Eikon Basilike materialize the executed Charles I as a Christ figure whose sanctifying blood heals Royalist wounds. Building from similar studies in poetry and performance, this project looks to expand book history studies of religion beyond explicitly sacred texts like Bibles and devotional books; at the same time, it looks to expand the study of sacramental poetics beyond its focus on dramatic dialogue to consider the page on which such dialogue is printed. Ultimately, the project concludes that material features of printed drama helped readers to practice and comprehend sacramental concerns of confession and holiness in everyday acts of reading.