Remembering Mary Magdalene on Stage: Virgin Martyrs and Sacred Bodies in Post-Reformation England
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This essay looks at how the images of female martyrs were appropriated in post-Reformation England while relieving public anxiety for absent objects to worship. I suggest Mary Magdalene as an apt substitute provided by reformers for the lost female sacredness and their self-contradictory desire to remove carnal idols but to preserve the palpable worship simultaneously. Through examining medieval virgin martyr legends and John Foxe’s female martyrs in Acts and Monuments, this essay traces the conceptual changes or inheritance of female sacredness throughout pre- and post-Reformation era. Lastly, the essay analyses Lewis Wager’s Life and Repentance of Mary Magdalene as a stage version of post-Reformation female sacredness and discusses how theatrical representation repeats and reveals the inner conflicts of the idea. The inconsistencies Mary Magdalene displays originate from the self-contradiction intrinsic to the Protestant desire to deny corporeality but to be incapable of removing it. So does the powerful representation of Elizabeth I, which overwhelms the public with the tension between her earthly female body and her sacred conceptual body. The regret Mary Magdalene indulges in might be the self-reflection of the contemporaries who are secretly yearning to worship and to touch the bodily form of the divine.
Abstract
This essay looks at how the images of female martyrs were appropriated in post-Reformation England while relieving public anxiety for absent objects to worship. I suggest Mary Magdalene as an apt substitute provided by reformers for the lost female sacredness and their self-contradictory desire to remove carnal idols but to preserve the palpable worship simultaneously. Through examining medieval virgin martyr legends and John Foxe’s female martyrs in Acts and Monuments, this essay traces the conceptual changes or inheritance of female sacredness throughout pre- and post-Reformation era. Lastly, the essay analyses Lewis Wager’s Life and Repentance of Mary Magdalene as a stage version of post-Reformation female sacredness and discusses how theatrical representation repeats and reveals the inner conflicts of the idea. The inconsistencies Mary Magdalene displays originate from the self-contradiction intrinsic to the Protestant desire to deny corporeality but to be incapable of removing it. So does the powerful representation of Elizabeth I, which overwhelms the public with the tension between her earthly female body and her sacred conceptual body. The regret Mary Magdalene indulges in might be the self-reflection of the contemporaries who are secretly yearning to worship and to touch the bodily form of the divine.
참고문헌 (21)
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