The Aesthetics of Antichrist: From Christian Drama to Christopher Marlowe

by John Parker

Overview

In Dr. Faustus, Christopher Marlowe wrote a profoundly religious drama despite the theater's newfound secularism and his own reputation for anti-Christian irreverence. The Aesthetics of Antichrist explores this apparent paradox by suggesting that, long before Marlowe, Christian drama and ritual performance had reveled in staging the collapse of Christianity into its historical opponents—paganism, Judaism, worldliness, heresy. By embracing this tradition, Marlowe's work would at once demonstrate the theatricality inhering in Christian worship and, unexpectedly, resacralize the commercial theater.

The Antichrist myth in particular tells of an impostor turned prophet: performing Christ's life, he reduces the godhead to a special effect yet in so doing foretells the real second coming. Medieval audiences, as well as Marlowe's, could evidently enjoy the constant confusion between true Christianity and its empty look-alikes for that very reason: mimetic degradation anticipated some final, as yet deferred revelation. Mere theater was a necessary prelude to redemption. The versions of the myth we find in Marlowe and earlier drama actually approximate, John Parker argues, a premodern theory of the redemptive effect of dramatic representation itself. Crossing the divide between medieval and Renaissance theater while drawing heavily on New Testament scholarship, Patristics, and research into the apocrypha, The Aesthetics of Antichrist proposes a wholesale rereading of pre-Shakespearean drama.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801463549
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	07/05/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	26 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John Parker is Associate Professor of English at Macalester College.

What People are Saying About This

Stephen Greenblatt

At the center of The Aesthetics of Antichrist is the cultural arena in which theatrical performance, religious belief, and money are bound together. Teasing out the complex relations among these three elements, Parker discloses with a fierce glee the secret resemblances and half-hidden exchanges that have structured their long dance together. At once a work of passionate scholarship and of polemical outrage, this dazzling book explores the extent to which both the medieval church and the medieval stage were erected on pillars made from equal parts of faith, imposture, and hard cash.

David Quint

The Aesthetics of Antichrist bristles with ideas, and it is much more than a study of medieval and early Elizabethan theater. In its way, it is a frontal attack upon the hypocrisy, both in its technical and more familiar meaning, that Parker sees as constitutive of Christianity, and his caustic wit and relentless logic are bracing and revelatory.

Editorial Reviews

Although his subtitle suggests a primary concern with medieval and early modern drama, John Parker's book attempts nothing less than a master theory of Christianity.... No critic before Parker has ever attempted such an ambitious project of reading the late-medieval cycle plays through modern scholarly debates about the formation of the biblical canon. Throughout the book he writes with a passion for ideas and argument that is hard to find in most books on premodern drama.... He fittingly concludes with a long chapter on Marlowe, a playwright who has been read as both an orthodox Christian and as a de facto representative of Antichrist. Having spent the entire book tracing convergences between type and antitype, Parker argues convincingly that Marlowe is indeed both.

Speculum - John Watkins

"The Aesthetics of Antichrist bristles with ideas, and it is much more than a study of medieval and early Elizabethan theater. In its way, it is a frontal attack upon the hypocrisy, both in its technical and more familiar meaning, that Parker sees as constitutive of Christianity, and his caustic wit and relentless logic are bracing and revelatory."

David Quint

"At the center of The Aesthetics of Antichrist is the cultural arena in which theatrical performance, religious belief, and money are bound together. Teasing out the complex relations among these three elements, Parker discloses with a fierce glee the secret resemblances and half-hidden exchanges that have structured their long dance together. At once a work of passionate scholarship and of polemical outrage, this dazzling book explores the extent to which both the medieval church and the medieval stage were erected on pillars made from equal parts of faith, imposture, and hard cash."

Stephen Greenblatt

"Although his subtitle suggests a primary concern with medieval and early modern drama, John Parker's book attempts nothing less than a master theory of Christianity. . . . No critic before Parker has ever attempted such an ambitious project of reading the late-medieval cycle plays through modern scholarly debates about the formation of the biblical canon. Throughout the book he writes with a passion for ideas and argument that is hard to find in most books on premodern drama. . . . He fittingly concludes with a long chapter on Marlowe, a playwright who has been read as both an orthodox Christian and as a de facto representative of Antichrist. Having spent the entire book tracing convergences between type and antitype, Parker argues convincingly that Marlowe is indeed both."—John Watkins, Speculum

"At the center of The Aesthetics of Antichrist is the cultural arena in which theatrical performance, religious belief, and money are bound together. Teasing out the complex relations among these three elements, Parker discloses with a fierce glee the secret resemblances and half-hidden exchanges that have structured their long dance together. At once a work of passionate scholarship and of polemical outrage, this dazzling book explores the extent to which both the medieval church and the medieval stage were erected on pillars made from equal parts of faith, imposture, and hard cash."—Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University

"The Aesthetics of Antichrist bristles with ideas, and it is much more than a study of medieval and early Elizabethan theater. In its way, it is a frontal attack upon the hypocrisy, both in its technical and more familiar meaning, that Parker sees as constitutive of Christianity, and his caustic wit and relentless logic are bracing and revelatory."—David Quint, Sterling Professor of Comparative Literature and English, Yale University

"The Aesthetics of Antichrist is a pathbreaking book, astonishing in its ambition, range, complexity, and accomplishment. It will give literary critics, theologians, theater historians, and Marlovians something to argue with for years to come. The range of John Parker's learning is extremely impressive and that learning is deployed with wit and astonishing intelligence and used to focus a highly original set of interconnected and multifaceted arguments. I know I will be thinking about and with this book for a long time—it is a profound and marvelous piece of work, a book of unusual and unprecedented scope."—Sarah Beckwith, Marcello Lotti Professor of English and Professor of Religion and Professor of Religious Studies and Theater Studies, Duke University

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