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Sacrificial Acts: Martyrdom And Nationhood In Seventeenth-Century Drama, Kelley Kay Hogue

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sacrificial Acts: Martyrdom and Nationhood in Seventeenth-Century Drama posits that the importance of sixteenth-century martyrologies in defining England's national identity extends to the seventeenth century through popular representations of martyrdom on the page and stage. I argue that drama functions as a gateway between religious and secular conceptions of martyrdom; thus, this dissertation charts the transformation of martyrological narratives from early modern editions of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments to the execution of the Royal Martyr, Charles I. Specifically, I contend that seventeenth-century plays shaped the secularization of martyrdom in profound ways by staging the sacrificial suffering and deaths of …