Pain and Compassion in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Studies in Renaissance Literature, 31)

An examination of the themes of pain and compassion in key Renaissance writers, at a time when religious attitudes to suffering were changing.A deeply original work of scholarship. Through fine close readings of primary and secondary texts, the author offers the fullest account we have of the related phenomena of pain, sympathy, and sensation in early modern culture.Michael Schoenfeldt, John R. Knott, Jr., Professor of English, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor In late medieval Catholicism, pain was seen as a way of imitating Christ, and as an avenue to salvation. During the earlymodern period, Protestant theologians came to reject these assumptions, and attempted to redefine and circumscribe the spiritual meaning of suffering. The rethinking of the meaning of pain during the early modern era is the central theme of this book. The author pays particular attention to how literary writers explored the issue of pain, by placing their work in a broad context of devotional, theological, philosophical and medical texts on suffering. In detailed readings of Alabaster, Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Lanyer, Spenser, Milton and Montaigne, he shows that early modern culture located the meaning of pain in its capacity to elicit compassion in others - yet the nature of thiscompassion was also fiercely contested. Dr JAN FRANS VAN DIJKHUIZEN is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Leiden. Frontcover 1 Table of Contents 6 List of Illustrations 10 FIG. 1. Descartes’ model of pain. De homine figuris et latinitate donatus a Florentio Schuyl (Leiden : 1662), 111. Leiden University Library, 519 F 3 : 1. 32 FIG. 2. Matthias Grünewald (Mathis Nithart Gothart), The Crucifixion. First view of the Isenheim Altarpiece, c. 1512–15 (oil on panel). Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library. 47 FIG. 3. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Calvary, 1502. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1927 (27.54.2). 49 FIG. 4. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Calvary, c. 1500–04. bpk / Kupferstichkabinett, SMB / Volker-H. Schneider. 50 FIG. 5. Bohemian Master, Calvary, c. 1360. bpk / Gemäldegalerie, SMB / Jörg P. Anders. 52 FIG. 6. The death of John Oldcastle, Actes and Monuments (1576), 620. Leiden University Library, 1368 C 4–5. 97 FIG. 7 ‘A Table of the X. first Persecutions of the Primitive Church’, Actes and Monuments (1576), page one of a fold-out illustration, 104. Leiden University Library, 1368 C 4–5. 98 FIG. 8. The execution of St. Lawrence, Actes and Monuments (1576), detail from the ‘Table of the X. first Persecutions of the Primitive Church’. Leiden University Library, 1368 C 4–5. 99 FIG. 9. The execution of St. Lawrence. Giovanni Battista de Cavalleriis, Ecclesiae militantis triumphi (Rome, 1585), fol. 18. Leiden University Library, THYSIA 2087 : 5. 100 FIGS 10 and 11. Benedictus van Haeften, Schola Cordis, sive aversi a deo cordis, ad eumdem reductio, et instructio (Antwerp, 1629), Emblem 26 and 44. Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, 1118 H 1. 156 FIG. 12. Daniel Cramer, Emblemata Sacra (Frankfurt, 1624), Emblema xxiii. Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, 489 E 13. 157 FIG. 13. Charter of Christ. The Desert of Religion and other poems and religious pieces, etc. mostly illustrated, in Northern English, British Library MS Add. 37049, fol. 23. 183 FIG. 14. Fold-out frontispiece of Eikon basilike: The pourtracture of His Sacred Majestie in his solitudes and sufferings (London, 1648 [i.e. 1649]). Leiden University Library, 3678 F 25. 221 Acknowledgements 12 Chapter 1 Introduction 14 Chapter 2 Early Modern Religious Discourses of Pain 44 Chapter 3 Religious Pain from Alabaster to Donne 102 Chapter 4 The Theology of Physical Suffering in Herbert 127 Chapter 5 Poetry and the Passion of Christ in Crashaw and Lanyer 160 Chapter 6 Pain, Compassion, and Community from Spenser to Milton 186 Chapter 7 Pain and Compassion in the Essais of Mantaigne 229 Afterword 256 Bibliography 264 Index 280 Backcover 288 'A deeply original work of scholarship. Through fine close readings of primary and secondary texts, the author offers the fullest account we have of the related phenomena of pain, sympathy, and sensation in early modern culture.' Michael Schoenfeldt, John R. Knott, Jr., Professor of English, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In late medieval Catholicism, pain was seen as a way of imitating Christ, and as an avenue to salvation. During the early modern period, Protestant theologians came to reject these assumptions, and attempted to redefine and circumscribe the spiritual meaning of suffering. The rethinking of the meaning of pain during the early modern era is the central theme of this book. The author pays particular attention to how literary writers explored the issue of pain, by placing their work in a broad context of devotional, theological, philosophical and medical texts on suffering. In detailed readings of Alabaster, Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Lanyer, Spenser, Milton and Montaigne, he shows that early modern culture located the meaning of pain in its capacity to elicit compassion in others - yet the nature of this compassion was also fiercely contested. Dr Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Leiden Early modern religious discourses of pain -- Religious pain from Alabaster to Donne -- The theology of physical suffering in Herbert -- Poetry and the Passion of Christ in Crashaw and Lanyer -- Pain, compassion, and community from Spenser to Milton -- Pain and compassion in the Essais of Montaigne