The English Martyr from Reformation to Revolution
The English martyr from reformation to revolution By Alice Dailey Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012 Dailey's is the most recent contribution to a rich body of work on martyrdom and early modern literature. Building on Susannah Monta's cross confessional approach to martyrology as a literary genre, Dailey extends some of her claims forward and backward in time by analyzing medieval hagiographies as well as texts produced later in the seventeenth century. This diachronic approach is reflected in Dailey's invitation to consider what happens "when an old genre encounters the new challenges of radical historical change" (6) Anchoring herself within the field of historical formalism, Dailey examines not only the plot elements and character types contained within martyrological narratives, but also the "organizing behavioral attributes" they valorize and deplore (10) The book is characterized by uncluttered prose and efficient chapters with helpful subheadings. Though Dailey is perhaps overly fond of words such as "rupture" and "fissure," the repetition of key terms makes related arguments visible as the reader traverses the broad range of texts she addresses. For all these reasons, and for its excellent summary of crucial theological concepts, this is the first book I recommend to undergraduates interested in learning about early modern English martyrdom. Just as she is transparent in articulating her debts to Monta and others, Dailey is deliberate about distinguishing her work from that of scholars less interested in martyrological narratives as literary constructions. For instance, she concisely delineates the limitations of Brad Gregory's otherwise important book, noting that it tends to treat "martyrology as a transparent record of early modern Christian belief" (5) (1) If Gregory's enthusiastic study of popular faith systems represents one potential extreme, Elaine Scarry's influential work on "the body in pain" represents the opposite end of the spectrum. (2) Her thoroughly secular insights, grounded in the experiences of Latin American dissidents, have at times been imported into discussions of early modern martyrdom. As Dailey points out, however, the forms of suffering Scarry describes as world destroying are entirely antithetical to the martyr's experience, which uses transcendent stories to lend meaning and even beauty to horrifying violence (36) Dailey strikes an elegant balance between these two poles, retaining a healthy skepticism about the literal veracity of martyrological accounts without denigrating the power of the texts themselves. The English Martyr also clarifies what is at stake in the existing scholarly discourse by focusing on questions of legibility. Specifically, Dailey zeroes in on what Miri Rubin calls "martyr making," reminding us that martyrdom is co constituted "by victim and viewer, by historiographer and reader," and that the martyr's experience is only recognized as such if there is some correlation between the viewpoints of these various agents (94) Citing a famous phrase of Augustine's, she suggests that martyrdom "is neither merely cause nor death; it is a set of retrospective, narrative operations that depend on the legible rehearsal of martyr models" (100) In other words, early modern martyrologists used narrative tropes imported from medieval anthologies such as The Golden Legend in order to authenticate their own accounts. Equally important, these models were a part of every individual martyr's imagination, and so it is not accurate to say that they were simply imposed upon the events of the martyr's torture and execution after the fact. It is here that the book, which otherwise relies on careful historical research and close readings rather than on critical theory, reaches for some additional vocabulary to buttress its claims. Referencing Pierre Bourdieu's concept of the habitus, Dailey clarifies that the martyr paradigm is more than a set of formal narrative structures; it reflects an embodied knowledge that, for early modern Christians, was a thoroughly naturalized part of their worldview.