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Damned Above Ground: Dreadful Despair in Elizabethan and Stuart Literature

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Fear in the Medical and Literary Imagination, Medieval to Modern

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine ((PLSM))

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Abstract

In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature, despair was a subject of fascination and horror. Retaining its theological meaning of despair of God’s mercy, the word had connotations of judgement and eternal punishment. In poetry, drama, religious treatises and tracts, the despairing were portrayed as terrified, distracted, suicidal, and their bodies as wasting. This type of literature was intended to grip the reader or audience, and inspire pious self-examination. It also reflected, and played upon, anxieties during this period related to the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Edmund Spenser , The Faerie Queene, ed. T. P. Roche (London: Penguin Books, 1978), Bk 1, IX, 21–54, 151–59.

  2. 2.

    The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘despair ’ as ‘a state of mind in which there is entire want of hope; hopelessness’: “despair , n.”. OED Online. June 2017. Oxford University Press, www.oed.com. Accessed July 3, 2017.

  3. 3.

    Larry D. Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 311 (‘The Parson’s Tale,’ ll. 692–93); for a fuller discussion of despair in The Fairie Queene and other works of medieval and Renaissance literature, see S. Snyder, “The Left Hand of God: Despair in Medieval and Renaissance Tradition,” Studies in the Renaissance 12 (1965): 18–59.

  4. 4.

    See Mary Ann Lund’s essay in this volume, “‘Without a Cause: Fear in The Anatomy of Melancholy ’ ”.

  5. 5.

    T. Bright, A Treatise of Melancholie Containing the Causes Thereof, & Reasons of the Strange Effects It Worketh in Our Minds and Bodies (London, 1586), 184–85; For further discussion of Bright’s views on afflictions of conscience , see N. L. Brann, “The Problem of Distinguishing Religious Guilt from Religious Melancholy in the English Renaissance,” Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 1 (1980): 63–73; and Elizabeth Hunter, “‘The Black Lines of Damnation’: Double Predestination and the Causes of Despair in Timothy Bright’s A Treatise of Melancholie,” Études Épistémè 28 (2015).

  6. 6.

    Spenser, FQ (Bk I IX 49–50), 158.

  7. 7.

    Christian theology distinguished this kind of fear of divine punishment (timor servilis) from the fear of sin rooted in love and respect for God (timor filialis): see Daniel McCann’s essay in this volume, “Dredeful Health : Fear and ‘Sowle-hele’ in The Prickynge of Love,”.

  8. 8.

    Spenser, FQ (Bk I IX 35), 154; R. Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy , ed. T. C. Faulkner, N. K. Kiessling, and R. L. Blair, 6 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989–2000), (3.4.2.4) iii, 421.

  9. 9.

    Snyder, “Left Hand,” 53; S. W. Jackson, “The Use of the Passions in Psychological Healing,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 45, no. 2 (1990): 150–175, (at 160); Erin Sullivan, Beyond Melancholy : Sadness and Selfhood in Renaissance England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 21–22, 38–44.

  10. 10.

    R. Bolton, Instructions for a Right Comforting Afflicted Consciences (London, 1631), 20.

  11. 11.

    Snyder, “Left Hand,” 54–55.

  12. 12.

    A. Murray, Suicide in the Middle Ages: Volume II: The Curse of Self-Murder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 323–39.

  13. 13.

    Historians have recently questioned whether this attitude left no room for sympathy for those who had taken their own life, especially if they had been suffering from mental agitation. For more in-depth discussion of suicide in this period, see M. MacDonald and T. Murphy, Sleepless Souls: Suicide in Early-Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); J. R. Watt, ed., From Sin to Insanity : Suicide in Early-Modern Europe (New York: Cornell University Press, 2001); and Elizabeth Hunter, “‘Between the Bridge and the Brook’: Suicide and Salvation in England, c. 1550–1650,” Reformation and Renaissance Review 15, no. 3 (November, 2013): 237–57.

  14. 14.

    Spenser, FQ, (Bk I IX 53), 159.

  15. 15.

    C. A. Patrides, “‘A Horror Beyond Our Expression’: The Dimensions of Hell ,” in his Premises and Motifs in Renaissance Thought and Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 185–89.

  16. 16.

    P. Marshall, “The Reformation of Hell ? Protestant and Catholic Infernalisms in England, c. 1560–1640,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61, no. 2 (2010): 279–98.

  17. 17.

    R. Sibbes, Beames of Divine Light Breaking Forth from Severall Places of Holy Scripture (London, 1639), 323.

  18. 18.

    Quoted in Patrides, Premises, 192.

  19. 19.

    Quoted in Patrides, Premises, 196.

  20. 20.

    Marshall, “Reformation of Hell ?,” 290.

  21. 21.

    W. Perkins, A Discourse of Conscience Wherein is Set Downe the Nature, Properties, and Differences Thereof (Cambridge, 1596), 167.

  22. 22.

    Bolton, Instructions, I. 42, 51–52, 103, II. 79; R. Bolton, The Carnall Professor Discovering the Wofull Slavery of a Man Guided by the Flesh (London, 1634), 157. Among many other examples see H. Latimer, 27 Sermons Preached By the Right Reverende Father in God …. Hugh Latimer (London, 1562), 93–94; Robert Abbot, The Exaltation of the Kingdome and Priesthood of Christ (London, 1601), 21; John Downame, The Second Part of The Christian Warfare (London, 1611), 666; Jeremiah Dyke, Divers Select Sermons on Severall Texts (London, 1640), 170; and Thomas Froysell, Sermons Concerning Grace and Temptations (London, 1678), 78

  23. 23.

    Bolton, Instructions, I. 44, 51, 233, 301.

  24. 24.

    A. Hunt, The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and Their Audiences, 1590–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 81–94; T. Fuller, The Holy State (Cambridge, 1642), 90.

  25. 25.

    Bolton, Carnall Professor, 159–60.

  26. 26.

    Bolton, Instructions, I. 5 and note, 12, 18–19, 44 and note, II. 84–85.

  27. 27.

    L. B. Campbell, “Doctor Faustus: A Case of Conscience ,” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 67 (1952): 224.

  28. 28.

    W. Harrison and W. Leigh, Death ’s Advantage Little Regarded (London, 1602); for later editions, see S. Hindle, “Brettergh, Katherine (1579–1601),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edition, January 2008, www.oxforddnb.com. Accessed June 6, 2017; N. Bacon, A Relation of the Fearefull Estate of Francis Spira in the Yeare, 1548 (London, 1638); and M. MacDonald, “The Fearefull Estate of Francis Spira : Narrative, Identity, and Emotion in Early Modern England,” The Journal of British Studies 31, no. 1 (1992): 34.

  29. 29.

    A. Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 33–51, 86, 327.

  30. 30.

    C. W. Cary, “‘It Circumscribes Us Here’: Hell on the Renaissance Stage,” in The Iconography of Hell , ed. C. Davidson and T. H. Seiler (Kalamazoo, MI: MI Institute Publications, 1992), 189.

  31. 31.

    K. Poole, “Dr. Faustus and Reformation Theology,” in Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion, ed. G. A. Sullivan, Jr., P. Cheney, and A. Hadfield (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 97, 102–7.

  32. 32.

    C. Marlowe, Doctor Faustus and Other Plays, ed. D. Bevington and E. Rasmussen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) (B-Text, 2.3, ll. 18–23), 204.

  33. 33.

    D. Wootton, ed., Doctor Faustus with The English Faust Book (Cambridge: Hackett Classics, 2005), 144.

  34. 34.

    E. M. Butler, The Fortunes of Faust (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing, 1998), 8.

  35. 35.

    T. Morton, Two Treatises Concerning Regeneration (London, 1597), 29–30.

  36. 36.

    For a more detailed account of Spiera’s death and its significance, see M. A. Overell, “The Exploitation of Francesco Spiera,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 26, no. 3 (Autumn, 1995): 619–37. While Spiera’s trial and death are historical events, Overell questions the reliability of eye-witness accounts of his illness, given the polemical motivations of the authors.

  37. 37.

    MacDonald, “Fearefull Estate,” 33–34.

  38. 38.

    Bacon, A Relation, 36–37, 125–26.

  39. 39.

    Overell, “Exploitation of Francesco Spiera,” 623–24.

  40. 40.

    B. Collett, Italian Benedictine Scholars and the Reformation: The Congregation of Santa Guistina of Padua (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 221–36.

  41. 41.

    Walsham, Providence, 32–51.

  42. 42.

    Quoted in MacDonald, ‘Fearefull Estate,’ 54 and 58.

  43. 43.

    J. Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, ed. R. Sharrock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 49–50.

  44. 44.

    Bolton, Carnall Professor, 158–59; Sullivan, Beyond Melancholy , 34–38; Hunter, “Black Lines of Damnation.”

  45. 45.

    Perkins, A Golden Chaine: Or the Description of Theologie Containing the Order of the Causes of Salvation and Damnation (Cambridge, 1600), 474; Perkins, Satans Sophistrie Answered By Our Saviour Christ (London, 1604), 132.

  46. 46.

    R. Baxter, A Christian Directory or, A Sum of Practical Theologie and Cases of Conscience (London, 1673), 312.

  47. 47.

    Richardson as quoted in Overell, ‘Exploitation of Francesco Spiera,’ 637.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for the History of Emotions, Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK

    Elizabeth Hunter

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Correspondence to Elizabeth Hunter .

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  1. Lincoln College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Daniel McCann

  2. Glasgow Centre for Population Health, Glasgow, UK

    Claire McKechnie-Mason

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Hunter, E. (2018). Damned Above Ground: Dreadful Despair in Elizabethan and Stuart Literature. In: McCann, D., McKechnie-Mason, C. (eds) Fear in the Medical and Literary Imagination, Medieval to Modern. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55948-7_8

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