I’m pleased to announce the release of my first book, The English Martyr from Reformation to Revolution, currently in production at the University of Notre Dame Press and due out in mid-December. This book studies the development of English martyr literature from the late Middle Ages to the execution of King Charles I in 1649. Martyrdom, I argue, is not a kind of death but a kind of story—a retrospective interpretation that follows a long-established narrative form. In the Christian tradition, the ideal martyr story is one that replicates as closely as possible the persecutions of pious biblical figures, namely the Maccabees martyrs of the Old Testament, Jesus, and persecuted apostles like Stephen and Peter. In the violent upheaval that marked the Protestant Reformation in England, both Catholics and Protestants labored to inscribe their suffering believers into the paradigm of Christian martyrdom, often under circumstances that did not match those of biblical persecutions. This book is interested in how the martyr genre attempts to reconcile the broad range of individuals, beliefs, and persecutions seeking legitimation through claims of typological suffering. I argue that the genre changes in response to the complex contingencies of the English Reformation and, more significantly, that the events of history are themselves shaped by the pressures of this important literary form.
Click here to see the Amazon listing of the book.
