Procuring Immortality: Eschatological Reform and the Pursuit of Worldly Fame in English Renaissance Literature

我的论文将考虑如何早期现代英国公民设想死亡和来世，探讨如何不断变化的宗教文化的新教改革影响传统的末世论信仰。历史学家，如埃蒙达菲和彼得马歇尔写了大量关于早期现代末世论和对死亡的态度的主题，然而，我的研究方法的一个独特的元素是调查这些主题是如何在文艺复兴时期的文学描绘。我将进行一项新的历史主义研究，考虑早期现代文学在多大程度上反映了当代社会的关注，反过来说，文艺复兴时期文学如何影响了埃塞俄比亚和埃塞俄比亚的社会态度。通过研究这一时期的历史和文学文本，我努力证明，天主教纪念仪式的减少与社会对世俗名声和自我纪念的新兴欲望之间存在直接关系。托马斯里斯特，斯蒂芬格林布拉特，克拉拉卡尔沃和汤霍恩塞拉斯都发表了研究报告，调查戏剧性的死亡和纪念，然而，他们的研究忽略了文艺复兴时期的人物在死前所采用的方法，以确保他们自己的死后记忆。因此，我的研究将对这一批评领域产生影响，因为它将论证文艺复兴时期的剧作家通过描绘努力保证自己不朽的人物来应对生者与死者之间关系的解体，通过建立一个持久的世俗遗产。我将发展我的硕士学位论文的研究，该论文考虑了如何改变对死者的教义态度反映在文艺复兴时期复仇戏剧，认为复仇基本上是作为一种纪念行为的功能，在改革新教末世论的蔑视执行。在我的博士论文中，我将把我的重点扩展到复仇悲剧类型之外，考虑新教改革的影响，以及末世论教义和葬礼纪念的相关变化，对早期现代文学和社会文化的影响。

My thesis will consider how early modern English citizens envisaged death and the afterlife, exploring how the changing religious culture of the Protestant Reformation influenced traditional eschatological beliefs. Historians such as Eamon Duffy and Peter Marshall have written extensively on the subjects of early modern eschatology and attitudes towards death, however, a distinctive element of my research methodology is to investigate how these topics were portrayed within Renaissance literature. I will conduct a new historicist study considering the extent to which early modern literature mirrors contemporary societal concerns and conversely, how Elizabethan and Jacobean social attitudes were influenced by Renaissance literature. By studying the historical and literary texts of this period, I endeavour to prove that there is a direct correlation between the curtailment of Catholic commemorative rituals, and the emerging societal appetite for worldly fame and self-memorialisation.Thomas Rist, Stephen Greenblatt, Clara Calvo, and Ton Hoenselaars have all published research investigating theatrical depictions of death and remembrance, however their studies overlook the methods adopted by Renaissance characters, prior to death, to secure their own post-mortem remembrance. Therefore, my study will be influential to this critical field as it will argue that Renaissance dramatists responded to the dissolution of the relationship between the living and the dead by portraying characters who endeavour to guarantee their own immortality, by establishing an enduring worldly legacy.I will develop the research of my Master's degree dissertation which considered how changing doctrinal attitudes towards the dead were reflected in Renaissance revenge drama, arguing that revenge essentially functions as an act of remembrance, performed in defiance of Reformed Protestant eschatology. In my PhD thesis, I will expand my focus beyond the revenge tragedy genre to consider the influence of the Protestant Reformation, and the associated changes to eschatological doctrine and funerary commemoration, upon early modern literature and social culture.