National Reckonings: The Last Judgment in Seventeenth-century English Literature
Open Access
- Author:
- Hackenbracht, Ryan James
- Graduate Program:
- English
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 12, 2012
- Committee Members:
- Laura Lunger Knoppers, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Laura Lunger Knoppers, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Patrick G Cheney, Committee Member
Garrett Sullivan Jr., Committee Member
Linda Woodbridge, Committee Member
John Philip Jenkins, Special Member - Keywords:
- last judgment
nation
eschatology
seventeenth century
English literature - Abstract:
- This thesis examines the relationship between national identity, religion, and literary form in seventeenth-century Britain. Tracing how writers represent the biblical Last Judgment in their works, I explore a contemporary way of thinking about the nation that has been largely unrecognized by scholars. In the period, belief in Christ’s imminent Second Coming was widespread. I show how in moments of national crisis, such as war and revolution, authors turn to the Last Judgment as a powerful mechanism for both deploying and contesting ideas of the nation. The Last Judgment enables writers to break outside the category of the nation into the broader category of the church universal, ecclesia universalis, the mystical body of Christian saints bound together throughout history. In this regard, the concept of reckoning—of giving an account of oneself and one’s nation to God—is of utmost importance. It allows us to understand the double orientation of national identity in seventeenth-century Britain. In this double orientation, a writer’s vertical relationship with the church universal is deeply connected to his or her horizontal relationship with a political community. More generally, this thesis is a reminder of the importance of eschatology to British society. It is an exploration of the seventeenth-century religious imagination and of how writers used their printed texts to create communities of readers anticipating a national judgment, even as they looked forward to their citizenship in the church universal.