Papers by Vivienne Westbrook
ource. By reading Shakespeare through biblical culture we become alerted to further semantic poss... more ource. By reading Shakespeare through biblical culture we become alerted to further semantic possibilities within the plays. Naseeb Shaheen’s efforts in tracing the biblical quotations in Shakespeare’s plays have made the work of appreciating Shakespeare’s biblical sources much easier in one sense, whilst complicating the whole issue in another. Shaheen does not attempt to explain the semantic implications of the connections he makes, but, in terms of assessing the biblicism within the plays, provides a list that excludes as much as it includes. Shakespeare’s biblical influences extend to biblical allusion, stylistic patterning, scene and character types, all of which are outside of the scope of Shaheen’s enterprise.
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Reformation
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Some of England's most fascinating Renaissance texts have been forgotten by historians, liter... more Some of England's most fascinating Renaissance texts have been forgotten by historians, literary critics and theologians alike. The earliest printed Bibles in the English language provide an astonishingly rich resource for interdisciplinary studies in the 21st century. Long Travail and Great Paynes is a close textual analysis of seven texts that for a wide range of reasons, but no good ones, have been reduced to paratextual entries in general histories of the English Bible. Through extensive collations of her own, Westbrook uncovers the work of seven Renaissance Bible translator-revisers and argues forcefully for a new agenda to replace the outmoded and inappropriate one of evaluating Renaissance Bibles according to the extent of their influence on the 1611 King James Authorised Version. Every sixteenth-century text reflects something of the historical dynamic in which it was created, and English Renaissance Bibles, with their ever-changing text and paratext, have their own uniq...
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The fact that there are three accounts of Paul’s conversion in Acts 9, 22 and 26, and they are al... more The fact that there are three accounts of Paul’s conversion in Acts 9, 22 and 26, and they are all slightly different is a problem that has split scholars into essentially two groups, one that tries to read Luke’s account as historically accurate and cannot quite reconcile the discrepancies, and the second that regards Luke’s portrayal as legend. Although Paul makes very little reference to his Damascus experience in his own epistles, 1 Cor 9:1; 15:8-10; Gal 1:11-17; Phil 3:2-11, what he does say conflicts with what we find in the Lucan accounts. Peter T. O’Brien points out that in Paul’s own references to his Damascus moment in his epistles he does not even use the language of repentance or conversion, but rather of calling.
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In the nineteenth century one text played a pivotal role in the debates about the central tenets ... more In the nineteenth century one text played a pivotal role in the debates about the central tenets of Religion, Science, Politics and the national identity of Great Britain and its colonies. This text was not Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, but the humble English Bible, a text that had already impacted on the literary culture for almost three centuries.
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Representations of Elizabeth on film, from Sarah Bernhardt’s 1912 performance in The Loves of the... more Representations of Elizabeth on film, from Sarah Bernhardt’s 1912 performance in The Loves of the Queen through to Cate Blanchett’s 1998 performance in Elizabeth, directed by Shekhar Kapur, have tended to focus on her primarily as a queen of hearts forced to rule with the stomach of a king.
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The story of David and Bathsheba is a powerful ur-narrative of forbidden desire, and its conseque... more The story of David and Bathsheba is a powerful ur-narrative of forbidden desire, and its consequences, that has been appropriated through time, through cultures and through a variety of technologies of capture to reveal a wider range of perspectives on the relationship between a king and his subject, illicit relationships between the sexes and the betrayal of God by even the best of men. This chapter will attempt to discover where this tradition of reading Bathsheba as a seductress really began: in the biblical texts, the literature, the paintings? Beyond a cultural historical hunt to find out who framed Bathsheba, the frameworks offered by centuries of readers of Bathsheba may be used to re-read the biblical narrative; to explore not only the extent to which Bathsheba herself has been re-invented for a wide range of purposes, but the way in which adaptation, in turn, promotes re-readings that occasionally expose the more subtle and nuanced aspects of the biblical narrative itself.
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Canadian Review of Comparative Literature
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In this paper I demonstrate some of the ways in which typological structures link events a-tempor... more In this paper I demonstrate some of the ways in which typological structures link events a-temporally in order to satisfy temporal necessity during English Reformations. I will argue that whilst some types are linear, because of a single attribute that can be transferred wholesale to an English Antitype, frequently, typological structures combine attributes of Old Testament types and their New Testament antitypes as well as Classical and historical English types to form Tudor supertypes of the chosen and unchosen of God.
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John Rogers was the first of the influential Reformers to be executed by order of Queen Mary in 1... more John Rogers was the first of the influential Reformers to be executed by order of Queen Mary in 1555. John Foxe depicted this event in the four editions of his Actes and Monuments printed during his lifetime, not as a blow for Edwardian Reformation but as a triumph of the true church. Rogers wrote a rhetorical and dramatic account of his trial; its text was used and manipulated by Foxe as he set about removing ambiguities, delineating fuzzy polemical thresholds and sharpening the image of Rogers as a martyr in order to harness public fears about the reinstitution of papal power in England. Why he did so, and what response he intended to instigate by doing so, is worthy of exploration, for an examination of the emotional rhetoric of the trial of John Rogers aids our understanding of the way in which Reformation discourse – especially trial accounts – helped to shape emotion in the early modern period.
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With the publication of her provocative article “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” (1977) Joan Kelly... more With the publication of her provocative article “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” (1977) Joan Kelly added her name to a tradition that her own researches had traced back to Christine de Pisan (1364-1430). In some ways her more important article, one which was to have been part of a larger project, was “Early Feminist Theory and the Querelle des Femmes, 1400-1789” (1982). In this article Kelly situated late European Medieval and Early Modern opposition to oppressive patriarchal systems within a framework of active Feminism. With the invention of the printing press the opportunities for circulating misogynistic views increased dramatically in the sixteenth century. Kelly notes: “Holy Writ and the pithy sayings of the learned were trotted out by all the misogynists, no matter how learned or ignorant they themselves might be” (82). Biblical women were the most popular textual devices for guiding women’s behaviour precisely because the Bible was one of the few texts that was readily availa...
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This paper explores how societies fail to remember the figures they seek to memorialise, and the ... more This paper explores how societies fail to remember the figures they seek to memorialise, and the extent to which those memorials retain, or fail to retain, significance across time and contexts, by focusing on some of the more prominent literary historical and artistic representations of Sir Walter Raleigh from the sixteenth through to the twentieth century.
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There have been numerous treatments of the representation of Jesus especially in art and literatu... more There have been numerous treatments of the representation of Jesus especially in art and literature through the ages. With every new technology of capture comes a new mode of representation with new processes and new perspectives. The earliest attempt to represent Jesus to a film audience was in 1897, when the industry was still at an experimental stage. By the mid-twentieth century the Jesus film had evolved into a film genre with its own discrete traditions and web of associations. In recent years there have been a large number of important contributions to our thinking about the Jesus film, some of which I will be referring to in passing. What most interests me in the cultural representation of one of the most famous figures in western consciousness, for some a myth, for others a historical leader, and for many God on earth and man’s only hope of heaven.
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That Foxe’s martyrological accounts continued to be an important resource for subsequent generati... more That Foxe’s martyrological accounts continued to be an important resource for subsequent generations of literary writers and historians is undeniable, but in the middle of the nineteenth century, and in response to a set of conflicts that were culturally disparate from those that had provoked the Evangelical zeal of the sixteenth century, Foxe’s Book was conscripted for the war against the Antichrist.
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“This collection of essays by scholars from Great Britain, the United States, Canada and Taiwan c... more “This collection of essays by scholars from Great Britain, the United States, Canada and Taiwan covers a wide range of topics about Ralegh's diversified career and achievements. Some of the essays shed light on less familiar facets such as Ralegh as a father and as he is represented in paintings, statues, and in movies; others re-examine him as poet, historian, as a controversial figure in Ireland during Elizabeth's reign, and look at his complex relationship with and patronage of Edmund Spenser. A recurrent topic is the Hatfield Manuscript in Ralegh's handwriting, which contains his long, unfinished poem 'The Ocean to Cynthia', usually considered a lament about his rejection by Queen Elizabeth after she learned of his secret marriage to one of her ladies-in-waiting. The book is appropriate for students of Elizabethan-Jacobean history and literature.”
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Reformation, 1999
ABSTRACT Every sixteenth-century Bible reflects something of the historical dynamic from which it... more ABSTRACT Every sixteenth-century Bible reflects something of the historical dynamic from which it emerged. Even when the biblical text is minimally revised, the paratext of annotation, prefaces and indexes changes and reflects the discursive practices and power relations of an England negotiating its identity in a seemingly ever-expanding intellectual and actual sixteenth-century world-scape.
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Reformation, 1997
ABSTRACT Taverner has suffered neglect because his version of the Bible has consistently been mis... more ABSTRACT Taverner has suffered neglect because his version of the Bible has consistently been mistaken to be a correction of Tyndale's work in the Matthew Bible. Responses to Taverner have ranged between those who indignantly brush him aside as an unworthy would-be usurper of Tyndale's translation throne, and those who make desperate attempts to justify Taverner's place in English Bible scholarship by indicating exactly where in the New Testament the Rheims and subsequent A.V. revisers agree with, and are therefore influenced by Taverner.
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Papers by Vivienne Westbrook