Greek Tongues: Tragic Histories in Early Modernity

Author

Nicholas Devlin, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

9-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Comparative Literature

Advisor

Clare Carroll

Committee Members

Monica Calabritto

Feisal Mohamed

Tanya Pollard

Subject Categories

Comparative Literature

Abstract

How can literary form imagine new responses to historical ruptures, and what is at stake when tragedy moves from the playhouse into history? My dissertation, “Greek Tongues: Tragic Histories in Early Modernity,” examines early modern writers including Stephen Gosson, John Rainolds, Sir Philip Sidney, George Buchanan, Christopher Marlowe, Andrew Marvell, and Thomas Hobbes who used Greek tragic forms and figures to respond to political change and religious violence. In doing so, it looks to add to conversations on the reception of Greek tragedy across religious, political, and historical writing, and to explore the emergence of tragedy as an ethical or philosophical concept in early modernity. The years between 1540 and 1650 in England witnessed sweeping religious and political change on both domestic and international levels, including the growth of the Reformation, the French Wars of Religion, burgeoning absolutist rule, massacres in Ireland, the regicide of Charles I, and the English civil wars. These early modern English writers responded to these crises through an engagement, often a pointedly political one, with ancient Greek language and literature. I argue that this historical conjuncture conditioned the use of tragedy as a mode of narration for current events and recent history and the use of tragic characters as analogies for contemporary and historical figures. As a result, this conjuncture also conditioned the emergence of an extra-literary or extra-theatrical idea of tragedy. In response to these conditions, poets and thinkers engaged with Greek tragedy as an ethical as well as formal category to narrate history, articulate political critiques, and respond to religious violence in a time of dizzying historical transition.

Recommended Citation

Devlin, Nicholas, "Greek Tongues: Tragic Histories in Early Modernity" (2024). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5933