OAPS

O U T S TA NDING AC A D E MIC PA P E R S BY S T U D E N TS
MAY 2012
USC LIBRARIES USC UNDERGRADUATE WRITERS CONFERENCE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

USC LIBRARIES USC UNDERGRADUATE WRITERS CONFERENCE Published by Figueroa Press 840 Childs Way, 3rd Floor University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90089-2540

2012 USC Libraries All rights reserved No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews. ISBN-13: 978-0-18-213370-3 ISBN-10: 0-18-213370-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2010925616 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data USC Libraries USC Undergraduate Writers Conference OAPS: Outstanding Academic Papers by Students

Contents
4 FOREWORD Catherine Quinlan 6 INTRODUCTION Nathalie Joseph 8 WHO AND WHAT ART THOU?: THE QUESTION OF THE CHILD IN PETER PAN Colin Dwyer 22 THE REGULATION OF FIREARMS AFTER HELLER

Alexander Fullman
40 WICKED AND DIVERSE OPINIONS: CONTROLLING HERESY IN THE HENRICIAN REFORMATION Stephen Lamb 102 OPTOGENETICS LIGHTS THE WAY TO RESTORED VISION

Justine Lee
114 PLAYERS IN YOUR HUSWIFERY, AND HUSWIVES IN YOUR BED: AN EXAMINATION OF THE EARLY MODERN ENGLISH WOMAN AND THE ROLE OF APPAREL IN CONTRADICTORY NOTIONS OF IDEAL WOMANHOOD Maureen Lenker 152 CASUAL LABOR: HOW FARMVILLE (2009) CONVERGES PRODUCTION, CONSUMPTION, AND PLAY Jason Lipshin 166 REPRESENTING DISASTER AND MAGICAL REALISM IN AFTER THE QUAKE: ILLUSTRATING ANXIETY OF THE SELF Victor Luo 190 A ULYSSES CAROL: RECONCILING THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Jennifer Sommerfeld 200 OSCILLATIONS OF RACE AND MEMORY: THE STRAINED PATH TO A MORE PERFECT UNION Tiffany Yang

Foreword
CATHERINE QUINLAN
Dean of the USC Libraries

In 2010, the University of Southern California Libraries became the rst North American academic institution to participate in the international Outstanding Academic Papers by Students (OAPS) program. We are proud to mark the third year of working with our 11 partner libraries from throughout Asia by hosting the rst-ever OAPS Task Force meeting in the United States and by welcoming new USC colleagues as our publication partners. We began OAPS at USC as a pilot project with the USC School of Social Work, and in 2011, we expanded our disciplinary reach through partnering with the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. This year, the USC Ofce of Undergraduate Programs and the Undergraduate Writers Conference have joined us to help select outstanding student writing from the entire breadth of undergraduate scholarship at USC. Our 2012 OAPS selections represent tremendous diversity in subject matter and modes of exploration. In analytical essays, textual analyses, and research papers, our student writers in this years collection explore the aftermath of Japans Kobe earthquake through the medium of the short story; the political and cultural role of womens apparel in the early-modern world; the use of algae in therapies for blindness; and many other topics that demonstrate the transformative talents of USC students. I would like to thank Professor Steve Ching, university librarian of the City University of Hong Kong, for inviting us to participate in OAPS. We are honored to be among this esteemed international group of research libraries. I also would like to thank USC Professors Caley ODwyer Feagin and Richard Fliegel, who have been instrumental in bringing this collaboration into being. I look forward to many years of working with them and the Undergraduate Writers Conference to inspire and make possible excellent research and writing at USC and to share it with our community, our OAPS colleagues, and the world beyond.

Introduction
Associate Professor, USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

NATHALIE JOSEPH

For a task that appears on its surface to be so solitary writing is a surprisingly collaborative activity. Student writing often begins with a prompt, which likely claims some of its origins in a conversation between two faculty members. The texts thesis inevitably shows the effect of discussing ones idea with peers, the use of scholarship tells us about the dedication of university librarians, and the quality of the nal draft reects the ongoing guidance provided by writing faculty. Although each author ultimately produces a text of his/her own, the process of guiding the production of that text is, in a sense, a group effort. As a text, this edition of OAPS was also a group effort in every sense. After a number of conversations among faculty and administrative members of the university about the quality and consistency necessary for the success of such a publication, we formed a small alliance of Writing Program faculty, librarians, and seasoned student editors. While Norah Ashe-McNalley, Erika Nanes, and I are associate professors of the teaching of writing, Sophie Lesinska is the director of public services for Doheny Memorial Library. Each member of the group is professionally engaged in the production of texts but each of us also takes a personal interest in different topics and arguments. By maintaining our individuality and still working as a group, we were able to productively bring different perspectives to bear on the same publication. In practice, this meant that we divided up the substantial body of student writing available to us and began to pick out texts that impressed or intrigued us. While we worked alone in this rst stage of the process, we worked very collaboratively to choose the nal texts. We spent a number of hours reading each others choices and weighing the relative merits of each text. We were continually impressed by the overall high caliber of student writing but even so the texts that made the nal cut seemed to easily rise above the others. Then Eric Weintraub and Sarah Ingerson, two seasoned editors and previous staff-members of Scribe worked directly with the student authors and prepared the texts for publication. Norah and I then served as nal editors for each text, adjusting sentences here and there to maximize readability and ensure precision throughout each article. We hope that you are as awed by the surprisingly impressive ability of student authors as we were while preparing this publication.

Who and What Art Thou?: The Question of the Child in Peter Pan
COLIN DWYER
Department of English Professor William Handley

How do you begin to paint a landscape that you have not seen for decades? Each tree, each boulder, each blade of grasshow can you be sure that everything was exactly where you remember it being? Some colors may have faded in your memory since you last saw them, others may have brightened, and it is likely that more than a few features have gone missing since you last refreshed your memory of the whole image. Most importantly, it is undeniable that the scene that you put on canvas will be more reective of the landscape as it exists in your memory than the landscape as it appears to the person who is gazing directly at it. Why, then, should you paint the pictureespecially if you are doing so, ostensibly, for the benet of this direct observer? A similar question has been posed by contemporary critics of childrens literature: how can adults, years removed from their own youth, hope to write an accurate account of childhood for an audience composed of childrenand why? These critics conceive that, in the absence of a meaningful connection between the adult author and his child-reader, the act of writing ction for children is a difcult if not impossible task. The genre exists for authors to seek reclamation of their own nostalgic past and in the process, further the ideal, articial conception of the child by imprinting it on the real child who reads it. In J.M. Barries Peter Pan, however, one discovers a work that transcends the genre of childrens literature, accomplishing this by both accepting its limitations and undermining them. Seen in the light of recent developments in criticism, the characters in the novel can be read as actors in a tension not unlike the one which exists between author and reader. Captain Hook wields his stories like weapons, selffragmented and desirous of the promise that Peter Pan presentsthe idealized child; in this sense, the child becomes an elusive web of contradictions that somehow remains whole. Hooks pursuit mirrors the one undertaken by Barrie. In fact, Barrie embraces the contradiction inherent in the genre, using it as permission for bathing his work in further contradictions involving character and narration, which provide ample textual support for the child-readers instinctively deconstructive tendencies. Barries admission that the authors connection to the child-reader is impossible actually allows him the

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freedom to undermine the form of the genre in order to entice the child to forge the connection instead. In any critical assessment of childrens literature, a fundamental quandary arises just who exactly is the reader? According to stylistic criticism, every work of literature necessarily requires two actors: not only the author but the reader as well. Peter Hunt, a vanguard in the study of childrens literature, notes that reading is an interaction between author and reader (100). In other words, texts do not, in themselves, teach anything (89). The authors text offers potential meanings, coded in linguistic structures, and the reader accesses those meanings by decoding them with culturally instilled meanings of his own. In order for a text to contain meaning, the reader must possess a substantial perspective of his/her own with which to dene it. Without this mutual exchange, literature loses its value and the whole business of making books (and, especially, talking about them) becomes a nonsense (89). According to the leading contemporary critics of childrens literature, it is precisely the necessity of this exchange that places the entire genre on precarious footing. The childreader to whom the genres writers ostensibly speak is incapable of deriving the same meanings from a work of literature as the adult reader, because the child is still developing the skills with which to decode the linguistic structures embedded in the text. The child shares a different relationship with the author than the aforementioned relationship described by Hunt, thereby rendering the meaning of the work volatile. Because they have not yet been wholly sculpted with similar values as the adult author, children are at all times ready to read against texts, to use them as a basis for extravagant readings, free from tiresome constraints of understanding (Hunt 97). In the hands of the child, literature becomes uid in its expression. Because children understand fewer commonly accepted signiers, the meanings of these signs are less restrained by the authors intentions.

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Some critics, however, view the act of writing for children in more pessimistic terms. In her seminal work, The Case of Peter Pan, Jacqueline Rose asserts that childrens ction is impossible, not in the sense that it cannot be written, but in that it hangs on an impossibility, one which it rarely ventures to speak. This is the impossible relation between adult and child (1). Indeed, fully explaining what it means to be a child is difcult. According to James Kincaid, What a child is, in other words, changes to t different situations and different needs. A child is not, in itself, anything (5). Thus confronted with the lack of a relationship to the developing reader, and even the absence of an easily denable child, the author of childrens literature seeks instead to construct the ideal of a child for the purposes of his ction. In other words, there is no child behind the category, childrens ction, other than the one which the category itself sets in place (10). The child in childrens literature the child both featured in, and presumed to be reading, the text is in fact an articial creation, born out of adult desire to reclaim the past and designed to deny the indenable complexity of childhood. In this manner, the composition of childrens literature can be considered almost an act of aggression toward the real child it purports to represent and entertain. The real child nds itself subsumed by its ideal conception, swallowed by the same linguistic structures that s/he does not yet understand. It is both inserted into, and now subjected to, adult theories of how the world is arranged (Fowler). By thrusting upon the child-reader his/her conceptions of what the child should be, the author helps to shape the childs perception of the world and the meaning of his/her own childhood. Kincaid observes, The chief casualties are the very children we think we are protecting: needing the idea of the child so badly, we nd ourselves sacricing the bodies of children for it (6). Storytelling, therefore, becomes a means for the adult to assert the idealized memory of childhood over the reality with which it cannot interact. It should come as no surprise, then, that Captain Hook comes to the reader all but clothed in the menace of storytelling. Posed as the aggressive rival to Peter Pan, the

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embodiment of eternal youth, Hooks antagonism comes simultaneously accompanied by the tales that he uses both to dene himself and to wield like a weapon. When he and his bloodthirsty band of pirates are introduced to the reader, it is telling that they are heard rst and not seen. The voices of the pirates dene themselves in archetypal terms nautical slang and references to violence before the eye of the reader is invited to look upon them and evaluate them. And indeed, they are heard about, as well. The narrator does nothing to dene their physical appearances or their personalities they are instead characterized by the folklore that surround their respective pasts, many of which involve gures, such as Flint, whom the reader knows to be ctional. In this way, the stories assert prevalence over independent identities. Regarding Hook himself, the narrator remarks, I have been told that he was a raconteur of repute (Barrie 52). Barrie structures his sentence so that the captain comes to the reader embroiled in stories: not only is Hook a terric storyteller, but enough stories have been told about him that they have reached even the narrator. Hook proceeds to wrest from the narrator the story of his own history with Peter Pan, situating it snugly in the story of his life, which he tells to Smee (Barrie 55). Hook and his band assert control of their pasts, idealizing them with the help of their own linguistic codes, present in slang in a manner that makes their relationship with the world [and Peter] simple and manageable (Fowler 27). Storytelling possesses more uses than simple self-denition and reconstruction of the past; at several points, it acts as a weapon in present action, threatening to inict change on the very reality it represents. As Hooks pirates approach Wendy and the Lost Boys lounging blithely on Marooners Rock, the childrens resting place transforms from a comfortable surface to an ominous ground. The cause for this radical change lies in the pirates proximity and their refashioning of Wendys reality with simple storytelling: It was not, she knew, that night had come, but something as dark as night had come. No, worse than that What was it? There crowded upon her all the stories she had been told of Marooners Rock, so called because evil captains put sailors on it and leave them to drown (Barrie 78). The same manipulative power can be seen preying on Hooks men.

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His conception of their identities, which he has thrust upon his men, conscribes the way they have learned to act: As dogs, this terrible man treated and addressed them, and as dogs they obeyed him, yet like dogs, as well, they showed him their fangs, and he knew that if he took his eyes off them now they would leap at him (Barrie 52, 133). His pirates operate, for better or for worse, within the connes of the simplied characters that he has established for them. Yet this trait can be self-inicted as well. In Hook, Barrie presents the gure of the boy grown up, warped by the erosive powers of external expectation. Even his physical appearance reects the fragmentation of an inner personality constructed from without. The narrator observes, His eyes were of the blue of the forget-me-not, peering out from a face that was cadaverous and blackavized (Barrie 52). Two features set so close together could not appear any more different from one another: Barries diction emphasizing the brilliant weight of memory (forget-me-not) within Hook and the manner he has sought to cloak it in the shadow of a constructed persona. And of course, one must not overlook the importance of the replacement appendage for which he is named. The sharpened hook that serves now as his right hand displays for all to see both his greatest loss and the avenging power of the violence on which he depends. In fact, the hook the fearsome symbol of his violent power has come to supplant his identity. Through Barries employment of synecdoche, the hook usurps Captain Hooks birth name and when he attacks others, it serves to represent him entirely. Even Hook himself refers to his weapon-hand as if it were an autonomous actor, capable of thought independent of his own: My hook thinks you did, Hook once accuses his crew member, I wonder if it would not be advisable, Starkey, to humour the hook? (Barrie 131). The hook merely serves to emphasize the fragmentation physically apparent in a character built on a reputation of violence. All of Hooks achievements in piracy are laid low by the lurking doubt represented by Barrie as an entirely separate voice that he might fail to satisfy the social traditions

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[that] still clung to him like garments (Barrie 121). But, it is the doubt itself that prevents him from alleviating his unease, for was it not bad form to think about good form? (Barrie 122). Thus, the root of the problem that plagues him, that fragments his personality with a claw within him sharper than the iron one, is not the Lost Boys, nor even Peter Pan (Barrie 122). It is Hooks self-awareness. Sculpted by stories and held tight by a memory that will not allow him to forget his past, his self-awareness brings into sharp relief the contradictions residing within him the contradictions between a pirate and a child raised to have good form; between a bloodthirsty criminal and a man disgusted by the sight of his own blood. Because he must always be aware of this fragmentation, Hook can never be whole. Barrie drives this home with his descriptions of Hook in the presence of Peter Pan. The narrator, in depicting Hook as he peers at Peter in the latters underground room, asks of the reader, Did no feeling of compassion stir [Hooks] sombre breast? The man was not wholly evil (115). Facing Peter, Hook represents a negation, the question implicitly denied and the sympathy undermined by the lurking no. Hook cannot achieve anything wholly in his state of fragmentation, not even evil. And once more in Peters presence Hook dives to his death, bid adieu by the narrator, who says, James Hook, thou not wholly unheroic gure, farewell (Barrie 137). His wholeness again rebuked, Hook departs the narrative still in fragmentation, defeated by the beast that stalked him always not Peter Pan nor the crocodile that swallowed him, but in fact his self-awareness. It is out of his inescapable fragmentation spawned in self-awareness that Hooks desire for Peter Pan is born. Peter represents the opposite phenomenon from Hooks afiction: Peter simply forgets. As the boy who will not grow old, he is the embodiment of all the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive (Barrie 100). This heartlessness arises partly as a product of his short memory span Peter experiences, and then he promptly forgets. The narrator observes of Peter, He often went out alone, and when he came back you were never absolutely certain whether he had had an adventure or not. He might have forgotten it so completely that he said nothing

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about it. [Wendy] was never quite sure, you know (73). In the air, ying to Neverland, Wendy confronts the same issue. When returning to her and her brothers after some time on his own, Peter would come down laughing over something fearfully funny he had been saying to a star. Indeed, sometimes when he returned he did not remember them, at least not well (40). And in fact, by the end of the novel, Peter does forget them: Hook, Tinker Bell, and the Lost Boysall of the principal characters except Wendy, whom he visits only on the rare years when he happens to remember. Time to Peter is an ever-renewing resource, something to be treated indifferently as it begins again with each new lost memory. Yet it is Peters forgetfulness, coupled with his complete lack of regard for others that enables him to reconcile his fractured parts. Peter resembles Barries description of the fairies who have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling at a time (Barrie 48). There is no space in Peters perception for the thoughts or feelings of others; it is occupied entirely by his own construction of the reality with which he interacts. In other words, he fullls Kincaids notion of the child: all is compact within the certainty of the not-knowing, refusing to know. The identity is whole, focused, absolutely assured (282). One may see this process in action when Peter rst meets Wendy, and he confrontsostensibly for the rst timeaffronts to his immaculate conception of reality. When Wendy remarks that Peters name is short, he [feels] for the rst time that it was a shortish name; when she tells him that his address sounds funny, for the rst time he [feels] that perhaps it was a funny address; and when she catches him crying, the reader sees his memory loss in processhe responds, I was crying because I cant get my shadow to stick on. Besides, I wasnt crying (Barrie 25). Within minutes, Peter was already of the opinion that he had never cried in his life (Barrie 26). Peter is whole, if only because he its from truth to truth so quickly that each time he rests at one, he possesses it entirely. Every belief that occupies him leaves no room for any other, be it memory or the beliefs of others. This, Barrie states, is the essence of childhood: No one ever gets over the rst unfairness; no one except Peter.

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He often met it, but he always forgot it. I suppose that was the real difference between him and all the rest (85). Peters world is his own, unwilling to suffer the intrusion of anything it nds offensive. It is this ideal that Hook, and the writers of childrens literature, nd so attractive and elusive in the child. They desire the comforting feeling of wholeness that they remember imperfectly from their own childhood and that exists now in opposition to the feeling of fragmentation that memory and external inuence have since instilled in them. It is telling that when Hook sets to his pursuit of Peter, Barrie refers to the latter by his last name: It was Pan he wanted, Pan and Wendy and their band, but chiey Pan (Barrie 109). At all other points in the novel, Barrie uses Peter to describe the boy. The intention behind Barries distinctive diction in this case seems clear: the word, pan, in common usage, is frequently employed as a prex meaning all, or whole. And of course, pan only offers this particular meaning when placed in relation to what comes after it, just as the adult author can only dene the idealized child. Hook whose name in its own right signies a tool that pulls objects apart searches not for the boy, but for the ideal that the boy represents: the wholeness promised, in retrospect, by the beginning of life. Incapable of understanding the real child, for they are no longer children themselves, adult writers seek to meet it halfway in the mutual interaction of the text. Their attempts, though, can only be couched in the linguistic structures that they have had thrust upon them to the exclusion of the initial, deeply personal beliefs of the child. Thus the authors attempts are inadequate, capable only of engendering an unsatisfactory response from the child- reader. One can see this interaction in Hooks nal, desperate query of his child counterpart. Hook cries, Pan, who and what art thou? He seeks to catalogue Peter into neat categories of his own creation, but he nds himself rebuffed again by the unknowable Peter responds, Im youth, Im joy (Barrie 135). Hook, like the adult writer of childrens literature, is unable to grasp the boundless, abstract variability inherent in the child using the means of understanding offered to the adult. The writer, in the face of this concession, resembles the frustrated Hook in the face

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of Peter Pan, a tormented man [who] felt that he was a lion in a cage into which a sparrow had come (109). Remembering with nostalgia the free feeling of their own childhood, the writer is taunted by the elusive child, who both evades his/her grasp and exists to remind him/her of that feeling which is now lost. And so the writer must settle for the creation of a misrepresentative ideal. Here, again, Hook ably demonstrates the plight of childrens literature in his interactions with Peter. Prior to the pairs nal confrontation, Hook employs subterfuge to sneak into the Lost Boys underground den, but an obstacle stops him just short of reaching Peter. He nds his entrance to the room where Peter lies unaware blocked by a door, and feeling for the catch, he found to his fury that it was low down, beyond his reach (Barrie 115). Only a child can open the door. Thus, Hook must look on from above it, permitted to see but not interact with the child on the childs own terms. In this same way, the closest that the adult author can come to representing childhood is a sort of voyeurism allowed only to see it from afar; across the distance of age, the author must reconstruct childhood inaccurately, creating more of an ideal than a substantial representation. Of course, it must still be admitted that J.M. Barries novel is classied as a text of childrens literature. The novel places the child front and center and, if not necessarily directed solely at children, nevertheless perpetuates several of the failures that contemporary critics have observed in childrens literature. First and foremost of these, perhaps, is the strong narrator that Barrie inserts into the story. Frequently, the narrator starts, pauses, or even rewinds the narrative in order to assert his power over the scenes provided. Two separate incidents are notable in this regard. The rst occurs early in the novel, when the narrator omits the childrens momentous escape from the nursery in order to skip ahead to the depiction of their parents night after night recalling that fatal Friday, till every detail of it was stamped on their brains (Barrie 17). Yet the narrator withholds those very details until the reader understands that this scene shall not happen in real time it will come to the reader as a story told by the narrator as an intermediary. This powerful speaker may be indicative of a reliance on the very form Barrie tends to

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parody. The guiding voice, Hunt states, has itself become an ominous clich in a narrative relationship, a device that overtly encourages the freedom of fantasy while covertly restricting the readers experience of the fantasy offered (117). Moreover, by insisting on framing the events in stories, Barries narrator risks associating himself with the same aggression that characterizes Hook and impedes adult authors interactions with the child-reader. While it is clear that Barries narrator presents an overbearing inuence on the narrative of Peter Pan, what remains unclear is just who Barries narrator represents. In the opening paragraph Barrie inserts the rst-person narrator after all, the narrator must make his inuence known immediately. Yet, more puzzling is Barries introduction of the second-person voice, ostensibly the child-reader. In the nal line, he invites the reader to share in the privileged position afforded one who is directly addressed by the reader. By simply stating, You always know after two, Barrie does much more than remark on age he places the child- reader directly in the story, on conversational terms with the narrator (7). The reader continues to be addressed throughout the work, at times asked to look at a scene with the narrator and at others to listen for a characters footstep. However, this relationship quickly becomes destabilized by Barrie when he introduces the plural we into the narrative. In the rst instance in which this occurs, the object described is Neverland, the place of childhood wonder inadmissible to grown-ups: the narrator says, We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more (Barrie 12). Abruptly, the child is placed outside of the narrative voice, only to be invited to return to the collective we later in Neverland. The narrator acts like a child, eager to take part in the story presented and unbeholden to the logical restrictions of narrative voice. Though contemporary critics roundly declare the failure inherent in the process of an adult writer composing literature for the child, it is precisely because Barrie admits failure that Peter Pan discovers success. Presenting it to the reader in the form of Hooks

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pursuit of Peter, Barrie shows the adults quest to represent the child to be hopeless, while implicitly accepting the contradiction in doing so. Unlike the critics conception of childrens literature, which replaces the real child with an ideal one born of memory, and unlike Hook, whose impulse to adhere to stories proves the symptom of his aggression and the source of fragmentation, Barrie seeks to follow the lead of his own eponymous character: he manages to allow contradictions to stand in harmony. In so doing, he lures the child-reader, with the texts interpretive freedom to come to an understanding. Within
Peter Pan, Barrie produces numerous potential meanings, each supported by the text,

and only in the exploration of these meanings does the child-reader manage to free himself from the heavy expectations of the author.

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REFERENCES Barrie, J. M. Peter Pan. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2005. Fowler, Roger. Linguistic Criticism. London: Oxford, 1986. Hunt, Peter. Criticism, Theory & Childrens Literature. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Kincaid, James R. Child-loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture. New York: Routledge,1994. Rose, Jacqueline. The Case of Peter Pan, Or, the Impossibility of Childrens Fiction. London: MacMillan, 1994.

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The Regulation of Firearms after Heller

ALEXANDER FULLMAN
Department of Political Science Professor Mark Kann

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In his seminal 1970 piece America as a Gun Culture,1 Richard Hofstadter notes that the United States has a long-standing tradition and culture of gun ownership, both of which continue to this day. Unsurprisingly, a large number of Americans own guns. In fact, one survey from 2001 found that 31% of Americans owned some sort of rearm.2 Owing to the large presence of guns in American society, signicant political debates frequently erupt over rearm regulation in the United States. The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution lies at the heart of this debate. With deceptively simple diction, the Amendment states, A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.3 For such a short statement, it has incited a surprising amount of political ruckus. While proponents of gun ownership believe that the Second Amendment prohibits the government from passing legislation that limits rearm possession, proponents of gun regulation believe that the Amendment limits the right to bear arms to militia service. If regulation proponents are correct, then the government can pass gun control legislation without impeding anyones Constitutional rights. Until recently, the Supreme Court had not explicitly resolved this constitutional fracas. In 2008, however, the Supreme Court decided the case of District of Columbia v. Heller4 and in doing so, held that the Second Amendment protects a persons fundamental right5 to bear arms irrespective of militia service. Although some people believe this decision will have profound consequences for gun control legislation in the United States, it is extremely unlikely that this decision will have a substantial impact on existing gun control laws.
PART I

To understand the context of the debate, one must rst understand the genesis of the Second Amendment. Under British colonial rule, many colonists distrusted the British Army and believed that the British government had infringed upon their personal liberties

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by forcing them to quarter troops. So when the new federal government was forming, many Americans feared it would create a standing army that would similarly infringe upon their rights. The Second Amendment was created in response to the publics fear of standing armies, and was initially intended to protect the masses from any of the new national governments potential tyrannical impulses. It was intended to prevent the federal government from eliminating state militias, disarming citizens, and violating individuals rights. In conjunction with this Constitutional protection, most colonies, and later states, required nearly all white men to bear arms and serve in the local militias.6 Because state militias were thought to be a means of protecting the rights of citizens, the Second Amendment was intended to protect the militia system, thereby checking the power of a nationalized standing army.7 However, as the militia system deteriorated during the nineteenth century and began to be replaced by the National Guard,8 questions around the Second Amendment and its applications within a militia-less country began to emerge. Part of this debate stems from the Second Amendments unique form. Although it was adopted as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791, the structure of the Second Amendment is unique in our Constitution.9 Unlike the other Amendments in the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment contains a prefatory clause (A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,) in addition to the main, operative clause (the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed). The distinctive presence of this non-operative prefatory clause and subsequent questions about its effect on the operative clause have generated signicant debate and fostered countless conicting interpretations of the Second Amendment. As various levels of government began to implement legislation impacting gun ownership over the course of the twentieth century, questions naturally arose as to whether or not these laws were permitted by the Second Amendment. The overarching question became, Does the Second Amendment limit the right to keep and bear arms to militia service, or does the right to bear arms exist irrespective of militia service? The answer to this question is

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paramount. It directly affects whether or not the government is able to pass legislation regulating and restricting rearm possession in the United States.10
PART II

When constitutional ambiguities arise, it is the role of the judiciary to interpret the Constitution and resolve them. Yet surprisingly for so prominent an Amendment, Second Amendment challenges have rarely appeared on the Supreme Courts docket. In fact, before 2008, the Supreme Court had only heard three cases that directly involved the interpretation of the Second Amendment.11 None of these three cases, however, extensively addressed the nature of the right protected by the Second Amendment,12 thereby leaving the debate over the militia service clause and its impact on the right to bear arms jurisprudentially unresolved. The rst case to address the interpretation of the Second Amendment did not come up until 84 years after its passage. In 1875, the Supreme Court heard the case of United
States v. Cruikshank.13 The case revolved around a conspiracy indictment against

several white defendants who were accused of preventing two African-American men from exercising their right to bear arms. Despite its potential to the contrary, the Courts decision gave little guidance as to the meaning of the Second Amendment. Although the Court found that the Amendment protected gun ownership for lawful purposes, the Court contended that this right was a natural right, neither created by nor contingent upon the Constitution.14 The Courts decision was a product of its time. Upholding the prevailing legal view that the Bill of Rights was applicable only to the federal government, the Court ruled, The [S]econd [A]mendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government.15 The Courts narrow decision avoided the broader constitutional question of whether or not the right to bear arms was contingent upon militia service. Instead, the Courts opinion paradoxically declared the right to bear

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arms to be a natural, and thus inviolable, right, while simultaneously granting state governments permission to infringe upon this right by severing the amendments purview from the realm of state politics. Because of this inherent paradox, people on both sides of the gun control debate could point to Cruikshank to support their particular view. The decision did not resolve the underlying debates over the meaning of the Second Amendment. The second case, Presser v. Illinois,16 was decided in 1886. Herman Presser was convicted of violating a section of the Illinois Military Code that forbade citizens from forming armed groups outside of the ofcial state militia without a license. Presser challenged the statute as an unconstitutional violation of the Second Amendment, but the Supreme Court held that the challenged section of the Illinois Military Code did not violate the Second Amendment; the law did not prevent individuals from joining the Illinois militia.17 The Courts decision was ideologically on par with the ruling in Cruikshank. Just as it did in the earlier case, the Court ruled that the Second Amendment did not apply to the states. However, unlike the Cruikshank ruling, the
Presser decision extended the meaning of the Second Amendment to include protections

against discriminatory policies in militia service. This expanded jurisdiction, however, was futile. Presser had never been denied the right to join the militia, and as militias gradually disappeared, the right to join one became less and less of an issue. Presser contributed little to the debate over the interpretation of the Second Amendment, especially in light of the absence of militias. The third and nal case was United States v. Miller,18 which was decided in 1939 and involved a challenge to the National Firearms Act of 1934. Jack Miller had been convicted of violating the Act by transporting a shotgun with a barrel measuring less than eighteen inches in length across state lines.19 Miller challenged his conviction on the grounds that the Act violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms. The Supreme Court disagreed with Miller, holding that the Act in question did not violate the Second

27

Amendment as it did not impede his rights to participate in militia service. Because Millers shotgun was not considered a weapon that would be used for service in the militia, the Court held that the Second Amendment did not protect his right to possess the shotgun. The Courts decision again sidestepped a direct ruling on the meaning of the Second Amendment, indicating only that it was not likely to protect weapons clearly designed for unlawful purposes.20 The Miller ruling, however, offered one innovation to the Courts Second Amendment jurisprudence by focusing on the type of weapon in question rather than the type of person. The Miller decision thus implied that the Second Amendments protections only applied to those weapons deemed conducive to militia service, but were not limited to individuals serving in the militia. Due to this prolonged judicial oversight, when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller on March 18, 2008, the Second Amendments meaning was still ambiguous and largely unsettled. Cruikshank, Presser, and Miller had neglected to clarify the relationship between the right to bear arms and the right to militia service.
PART III

In the seventy years between Miller and Heller, a sea of legal scholarship devoted to the Second Amendment emerged, particularly during the second half of the twentieth century as the political debate over gun control became increasingly heated.21 Two basic theories emerged, with scholars and judges divided on each side in light of the Supreme Courts limited and muddled jurisprudence. Each of these theories arrives at a different conclusion and carries separate implications for the right to bear arms. The rst theory is the collective right model in which the right to keep and bear arms is closely tied to militia service. This theory, which characterizes the Second Amendment as the right to have militias,22 maintains that the prefatory clause limits the scope of the operative clause, thereby limiting the right to bear arms to the maintenance of

28

28

a well- regulated Militia. The collective rights theory maintains that in the absence of militias in the United States, the Second Amendment has become anachronistic and is no longer applicable to modern society23 and consequently does not prevent the government from regulating the use and possession of rearms. Proponents of the collective right approach can nd support for their claims in certain portions of the
Presser decision. They frequently point to the segments of the Courts decision which

contend that the Second Amendment was written to ensure that the government could not impede on any individuals right to participate in militia service. These collective right proponents vehemently deny the existence of any Second Amendment guarantee of the individuals right to bear arms outside of the context of militia service. The second theory is the individual right model in which the right to bear arms exists irrespective of militia service. Proponents of this interpretation maintain that the Second Amendment contains a fundamental and individual right to keep and bear arms irrespective of militia service. Individual right theorists believe that while the prefatory clause announces a purpose for the Second Amendments operative clause, it does not limit the scope or function of it.24 For individual right proponents, the operative clause unequivocally grants all individuals the right to keep and bear arms, and governmental attempts to restrict the ownership or use of guns are unconstitutional violations of the Second Amendment.
PART IV

Without the Supreme Courts validation of either theory as the proper interpretation of the Second Amendment, the legal climate remained mired in this murky debate for nearly seventy years. In 2008, however, the Supreme Court nally ended this confusion with its ruling in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller. The District of Columbias Firearms Control Regulation Act of 1975 required that all rearms be registered, but imposed a blanket ban on the registration of handguns.25 The statute made it a crime to carry an unregistered rearm, and required that guns used for self-defense purposes be kept

29

unloaded and disassembled. Supposedly meant to prevent an accidental discharge, this latter requirement essentially rendered such rearms inoperable.26 Dick Heller was a licensed police ofcer in the District of Columbia and was thereby authorized to carry a gun when he was on duty. Under D.C. law, however, he was not allowed to keep a handgun in his home for self-defense purposes. Wishing to keep a handgun in his home, Heller applied for a registration certicate. The District refused his request, citing the Firearms Control Regulation Act of 1975s prohibition on the registration of handguns. Heller led suit in federal court in an effort to force the city to stop enforcing the statutes ban on the registration of handguns. The federal district court dismissed the lawsuit and denied Heller injunctive relief as the court did not recognize an individuals right to bear arms outside the context of militia service.27 In an appeal to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the district courts decision was overturned in a two-to-one decision that held that the Second Amendment protects an individuals right to keep and bear arms irrespective of militia service.28 The appellate court found that the D.C. statutes prohibition on the registration of handguns and requirement that all rearms stored in the home be kept in a non-operative state violated the Second Amendment. The District of Columbia appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which granted certiorari to decide the question: Whether [provisions of the D.C. code] violate the second amendment rights of individuals who are not afliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other rearms for private use in their homes?29 On June 26, 2008, the Supreme Court issued a ruling afrming the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision. It was a pivotal moment in legal history as the Supreme Court validated the individual right model over its collective right counterpart. The Supreme Court found that the fundamental right to keep and bear arms was an ever-present force in the language of the Second Amendment. In Justice Scalias

30

30

majority opinion,30 the Court held, There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.31 The individual right to possess a rearm was thereby disconnected from the qualication of militia service and the Second Amendment was deemed the Constitutional protector of the right to keep and bear arms for other lawful purposes like self-defense. The dissenting justices predicted that the majoritys decision would have a profound impact on gun control legislation. In a dissenting opinion joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Stephen Breyer envisioned unfortunate consequences that todays decision is likely to spawn. Not least of these is the fact that the decision threatens to throw into doubt the constitutionality of gun laws throughout the United States.32 However, this apocalyptic downfall of rearm regulations in the United States is unlikely. Because the Heller decision left so many critical questions unanswered even as it resolved the long-standing debate over the Second Amendments fundamental meaning, gun control legislation will likely continue to nd its Constitutional footing.
PART V

The Heller decision is admittedly symbolically signicant. The case represents the Courts rst ruling on the interpretation of the Second Amendment in nearly seven decades, and the rst extensive interpretation of the Amendment in the Courts entire history. For the rst time, the Court explicitly ruled that individuals have the right to bear arms outside of the context of militia service, and that the fundamental nature of this right prohibits the government from passing sweeping legislation banning the possession of rearms like the D.C. statute did. Thus, Heller was instantly hailed as a landmark decision and attracted signicant media attention.33 Yet, for all its symbolic signicance and despite Justice Breyers prediction, the case is unlikely to have a substantial impact on existing gun control legislation.

31

When delivering the decision in Heller, the Supreme Court justices explicitly acknowledged their eschewal of a complete resolution to the debates around the Second Amendment. They openly acknowledge the countless jurisprudential questions that their ruling would leave unanswered. Justice Scalias majority opinion for the Court held, Since this case represents this Courts rst in-depth examination of the Second Amendment, one should not expect it to clarify the entire eld.34 The Court declined to establish a standard of judicial scrutiny which the lower courts could then apply to subsequent cases concerning the constitutionality of gun regulations. When facing constitutional judicial scrutiny, most laws are evaluated using the rational basis standard. In other words, the government needs merely to demonstrate that the legislation was passed with a legitimate interest or rational basis behind it. However, when laws are charged with violating fundamental rights such as the Fourteenth Amendments right to due process, courts typically employ a heightened level of scrutiny, using either intermediate scrutiny or strict scrutiny with the latter being the highest level of judicial review. Under this heightened analysis, the government must prove that these laws or actions serve a compelling state interest, are narrowly tailored to achieve the compelling interest, and are the least restrictive means of achieving this interest in order for the law to pass through the constitutional muster. Although the Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia laws as unconstitutional, it did this in a noticeably atypical manner; it did so without employing a particular level of judicial scrutiny. Instead, the Court held, Under any of the standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights, banning from the home the most preferred rearm in the nation to keep and use for protection of ones home and family would fail constitutional muster.35 Although the Heller Court did reject the rational basis standard,36 the lowest level of judicial scrutiny, as a means for evaluating Second Amendment challenges, it deliberately declined to specify which heightened level of judicial scrutiny courts should employ when evaluating gun regulations.37 By choosing not to identify which standard of judicial review lower courts

32

32

should use, the Supreme Court deprives judges of the tools necessary for determining whether or not a rearms law violates the Constitution. In the context of gun regulation, the government frequently defends its legislation with claims of protecting public safety and preventing crime.38 These concerns are admittedly compelling government interests that would readily pass the rst prong of a heightened scrutiny test. Thus, when evaluating gun regulations, the second two prongsthe narrowly tailored test and the least restrictive means testare of particular importance for lower courts deciding on Second Amendment challenges. Using these high levels of scrutiny, the courts must determine whether [a] particular restriction is necessary to promote the governments compelling interest.39 Without the guidance of a specied standard of judicial scrutiny, judges cannot answer this question. They do not know which restrictions the Courts deem necessary to advance the states interests in public safety and crime prevention. Asking judges to evaluate laws without a specied standard for judicial review is analogous to asking policemen to enforce speed limits without radar guns. Just as this scenario might suggest that only the most agrant and obvious speeding violations would receive tickets, only the most stringent lawssuch as the D.C. law banning the possession and registration of all handgunswould be struck down as unconstitutional Second Amendment violations. Although the Court classied the right to keep and bear arms as a fundamental one, the Court readily acknowledges that this right is not absolute; there are exceptions. Justice Scalias majority opinion explicitly identied certain individuals who could be exempted from the right to bear arms: Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of rearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of rearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualications on the commercial sale of arms.40 Furthermore, like the Miller decision, Heller distinguished between the types of weapons protected by the Second Amendment, nding that only those arms that were in common use at the time of the Second Amendments adoption are protected

33

under the Amendment.41 By imposing such limitations, the Court limited the scope of the Second Amendment even as it expanded the context of its protections outside of the milieu of militia service. As it turns out, most gun control laws fall within these listed exceptions.42 As the respected Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III noted, Heller struck down a draconian law, one that completely banned handgun possession at home. That law was one of the strictest in the nation.43 In the rst seven months after Heller was decided, over sixty gun control laws were challenged in federal court, and not a single law was found unconstitutional.44 One such case, United States v. Rozier,45 was decided on March 4, 2010 in the wake of Heller by the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Under federal law, convicted felons are prohibited from possessing handguns. Christopher Rozier, a man with several felony convictions, was charged with violating federal law by possessing a handgun. Rozier challenged his conviction on the grounds that the law was an unconstitutional violation of his Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. He cited the Heller decision to support his claims, but the Court of Appeals ultimately found that the law was constitutional and fell within the purview of Hellers list of exceptions. Preventing a felon from carrying a rearm was clearly a matter of protecting public safety. The last point of contention concerns the District of Columbia status as a federal enclave. Because the law in question emerged from the District of Columbia, the Court did not decide whether the Second Amendment applies to the states. Because the Court did not address whether the right to bear arms could be applied to the states, only federal laws could be challenged under the precedent of Heller.46 As most gun regulations fall under the purview of state law anyway, the Heller decision does not affect the majority of gunrelated legislation. While it is possible for these statutes to be challenged, Heller will not facilitate this process.

34

34

PART VI

Although the Court declined to settle all of the jurisprudential questions incited by their assertion of a fundamental right in Heller, it did anticipate that the lingering questions would be resolved in future cases. The Court has already begun this process. In June 2010, the Court decided the case of McDonald v. Chicago.47 Factually similar to Heller, the case involved a law which banned the possession and registration of all handguns and other rearms. The Supreme Courts decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, struck down the Chicago law as an unconstitutional violation of the Second Amendment and held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment right recognized in Heller.48 As a result of McDonald, state and local governments have been brought under the purview of the Heller ruling. They denitively cannot pass or enforce laws that conict with the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Although McDonald was the rst post-Heller case to begin to clarify some of the remaining questions, as of October 2010, no other state laws challenged in McDonalds aftermath have been struck down as unconstitutional violations of the Second Amendment. The vast majority fall within the range of Hellers exceptions. While neither Heller nor McDonald has had a substantial impact on gun regulations in the United States, it remains to be seen how future cases will impact gun control legislation as the Court starts to explain the ambiguities Heller left behind. While Heller may lead to the downfall of the more draconian gun control measures in the United States, the small number of such laws coupled with the wide exceptions to the right to bear arms suggests that Heller will continue to have little effect on gun control legislation. Given that Heller offers such limited inuence, it will take another historic decision to defeat the majority of gun control measures.

35

36

36

REFERENCES Barnes, Robert. Justices Reject D.C. Ban on Handgun Ownership, Washington Post, 27 June 2008, 20 November 2010 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ article/2008/06/26/AR2008062600615.html?sid=ST2008070500624>. Cornell, Saul. A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783 (2008).

District of Columbia v. Heller: Questions Presented. United States Supreme Court. 20 November 2007. 20 November 2010 <http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx ?FileName=/docketles/07-290.htm>. Gun Ownership by State. The Washington Post. 26 May 2006. 25 November 2010 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/health/interactives/guns/ownership.h tml>. Hofstadter, Richard. America as a Gun Culture. The Gun Control Debate: You Decide. Ed. Lee Nisbet. New York: Prometheus Books, 2001.
McDonald v. Chicago, 130 S. Ct. 3020 (2010).

OConnor, Karen and Graham Barron. Madisons Mistake? Judicial Construction of the Second Amendment. The Changing Politics of Gun Control. Ed. John M. Bruce & Clyde Wilcox. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littleeld Publishers, 1998.
Parker v. District of Columbia, 311 F. Supp. 2d 103 (D.D.C. 2004). Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 F.3d 370 (D.C. Cir. 2007).

Perkins, Sarah. District of Columbia v. Heller: The Second Amendment Shoots One Down. 70 Louisiana Law Review 1061 (2010).
Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 (1886).

Rutledge, Devallis. Second Amendment v. Gun Control. Police Magazine. October 2010. 20 November 2010 <http://www.policemag.com/Channel/Weapons/Articles/Print / Story/2010/10/Second-Amendment-v-Gun-Control.aspx>. State Gun Control Laws. FindLaw. 2010. 20 November 2010 <http://law.ndlaw.com/state-laws/ gun-control/>.
United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875). United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995). United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939).

37

United States v. Rozier, 598 F.3d 768 (11th Cir. 2010).

Weir, William. A Well Regulated Militia: The Battle Over Gun Control. New Haven, Connecticut: ArchonBooks, 1997. Wilkinson, J. Harvie III. Of Guns, Abortions, and the Unraveling Rule of Law. 95 Virginia Law Review 253 (2009). Winkler, Adam. Scrutinizing the Second Amendment. 105 Michigan Law Review 683 (2007). Winkler, Adam. The New Second Amendment: A Bark Worse Than Its Right. The Hufngton Post. 2 January 2009. 20 November 2010 <http://www.hufngtonpost.com/adamwinkler/the-new-second-amendment_b_154783.html>.

38

38

ENDNOTES
1 Richard 2

Hofstadter, America as a Gun Culture, The Gun Control Debate: You Decide, Ed. Lee Nisbet (New York: Prometheus Books, 2001) 29-37.

Gun Ownership by State, The Washington Post, 26 May 2006, 25 November 2010 <http://www. washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/health/interactives/guns/ownership.h tml>. Perkins, District of Columbia v. Heller: The Second Amendment Shoots One Down, 70 Louisiana Law Review 1061 (2010). S. Ct. 2783 (2008).

3 Sarah

4 District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 5 Fundamental

rights have special signicance in American constitutional law. As I discuss later, laws challenged as restrictions upon rights declared by courts to be fundamental are evaluated at higher levels of judicial review.
The Changing Politics of Gun Control, Ed. John M. Bruce & Clyde Wilcox (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman &

6 Karen

OConnor and Graham Barron, Madisons Mistake? Judicial Construction of the Second Amendment,

Littleeld Publishers, 1998) 75. OConnor & Baron 75-76.

8 See

Saul Cornell, A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) 6. S. Ct. at 2783.

9 Heller, 128 10 11

I return to this discussion in part III. Other cases have mentioned or involved gun control laws without ruling on the interpretation of the Second Amendment. For example, in the 1995 case United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995), the Supreme Court ruled that the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, which prohibited individuals from carrying arms in school zones (dened as the area within 1000 feet of a school), exceeded Congresss power under the Commerce Clause and was therefore unconstitutional. Perkins 1062.
United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875).

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Perkins 1062.
United States v. Cruikshank 92 U.S. at 553. Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 (1886). Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. at 264-265. United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939).

OConnor & Baron 79-80. OConnor & Baron 80. Perkins 1063-1064. William Weir, A Well-Regulated Militia: The Battle Over Gun Control (New Haven, Connecticut: ArchonBooks, 1997) 40, 43. Perkins 1064.
Ibid. Heller, 128 S. Ct. at 2783.

39

26 Heller, 128

S. Ct. at 2788. F. Supp. 2d 103 (D.D.C. 2004). F.3d 370 (D.C. Cir. 2007).

27 Parker v. District of Columbia, 311 28 Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 29

District of Columbia v. Heller: Questions Presented, United States Supreme Court, 20 November 2007, 20 November 2010 <http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx?FileName=/docketles/07-290.htm>. Scalias opinion was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito. S. Ct. at 2799. S. Ct. at 2870.

30 Justice

31 Heller, 128 32 Heller, 128

33 See, e.g., Robert

Barnes, Justices Reject D.C. Ban on Handgun Ownership, Washington Post, 27 June 2008, 20 November 2010 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/26/ AR2008062600615.html?sid=ST2008070500624>. S. Ct. at 2821.

34 Heller, 128 35

Heller, 128 S. Ct. at 2817-2818 (footnote and internal quotation marks omitted).

36 Heller, 128 37 That

S. Ct. at 2818, n. 27.

the Court found the DC law unconstitutional under all three levels of scrutiny, including the rational basis standard, yet dismissed the rational basis test as the single test unsuitable for evaluating Second Amendment challenges is, in my view, impossible to reconcile. Although I do not comment on whether or not Heller was correctly decided in this paper, in my view, the Courts failure to evaluate the DC law under a single standard of judicial review and the decision to avoid specifying a standard for future cases are major shortcomings of the majority opinion. the Second Amendment, 105 Michigan Law Review at 683 and 731 (2007).

38 Adam Winkler, Scrutinizing 39 Perkins

1076.

40 Heller, 128 41 Heller, 128 42 State 43

S. Ct. at 2816-2817 (footnote omitted). The footnote noted that this is not necessarily an exhaustive list, thereby suggesting that other legitimate exceptions might exist. S. Ct. at 2817.

Gun Control Laws, FindLaw, 2010, 20 November 2010 <http://law.ndlaw.com/state-laws/guncontrol/>. J. Harvie Wilkinson III, Of Guns, Abortions, and the Unraveling Rule of Law, 95 Virginia Law Review at 265 (2009). New Second Amendment: A Bark Worse Than Its Right, The Hufngton Post, 2 January 2009, 20 November 2010 <http://www.hufngtonpost.com/adam-winkler/the-new-secondamendment_b_154783.html>. As of October 2010, no gun control law had been overturned due to Heller in any court in the United States (see post at 46). F.3d 768 (11th Cir. 2010).

44 Adam Winkler, The

45 United States v. Rozier, 598 46 Devallis

Rutledge, Second Amendment v. Gun Control, Police Magazine, October 2010, 20 November 2010 <http://www.policemag.com/Channel/Weapons/Articles/Print/Story/2010/10/Second-Amendment-v-GunControl.aspx>. S. Ct. 3020 (2010). S. Ct. at 3050.

47 McDonald v. Chicago, 130 48 McDonald v. Chicago, 130

Wicked and Diverse Opinions: Controlling Heresy in the Henrician Reformation

STEPHEN LAMB
Department of History Professor Cynthia Herrup

Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.Matthew 18:6

The Manner of Burning Anne Askew, Iohn Lacels, Iohn Adams, & Nicolas Beleman, with certane of ye counsell sitting in Smitheld. Anonymous. Engraving on paper. Trustees of the British Museum.

41

INTRODUCTION

In the summer of 1545, Anne Askew stood trial for heresy. She renounced conditionally and was released without any punishment or penance. In the summer of 1546, Anne Askew stood trial again for the same heresy. Within a matter of days, she had been interrogated, racked, and burned at the stake. Less than a year later, Henry VIII was dead and the religious creed for which Askew died was the law of the realm. This thesis examines the role heresy trials such as Anne Askews played in the battle between royal and ecclesiastical courts to control what would become the Henrician Reformation.1 Previous historians have marginalized heresys role in the Reformation because heresy only concerned a few doctrinal radicals who were willing to go to extreme and often fatal lengths to promote their beliefs. My focus, however, will be on the non-doctrinal elements of heresy prosecution. From the rst English prosecutions of heresy in the 15th century to the Reformation, the crime of heresy evolved into a political tool that would play an integral role in the way the royal government, ecclesiastical ofcials, and common English subjects attempted to control the course of the Reformation. This focus on prosecution and politics opens up new ways to consider how heresy was used as a political, rather than religious, tool, as well as new ways to understand the conicts that made up the nascent Reformation. The historians who have avoided giving heresy a position of central importance have some good reasons for their actions. Certainly, they have acknowledged that both royal ministers and clerics used heresy prosecutions to inspire passing and enforcing Englands laws. But generally speaking, historians looking at general trends cannot rely on the evidence of heresy, because heretics were anything but general. They held radical opinions, performed socially unacceptable acts, and sometimes deed established norms to the point of a gruesome death. Most importantly, heresy and heretics were just uncommon.

42

But then why were the principal gures on both the royal and ecclesiastical sides of this conict so interested in heresy? By Henry VIIIs death in 1547, royal courts had infringed upon ecclesiastical ex ofcio jurisdiction more quickly and forcefully than ever before. Royal ministers like Sir Thomas More and Christopher St. German wrote extensively on the prosecution of heresy and the Crowns role in it.2 Virtually every document central to the legal reforms associated with the Henrician Reformation mentions the prosecution of heretics.3 There is a way to reconcile the rarity of heresy trials and the importance early modern policy makers associated with these trials. If heresy is understood to refer not to a group of fanatic individuals but to a powerful legal tool, its centrality to the legal battles surrounding the Reformation can be acknowledged without taking our evidence only from exceptional occasions. Heresy from the prosecutors viewpoint was a exible, powerful tool, and it shaped many non-doctrinal aspects of the Reformation. Religious nonconformity was certainly one thing, perhaps the main thing, which heresy deterred. It was not the only thing. The right to prosecute heresy implied the right to dene orthodoxy, and orthodoxy could extend from transubstantiation to the legal authority of the king as Supreme Head of the English church. Henry VIIIs perceived need for a divorce in deance of papal authority could only be met with this ability. While English bishops in the early 15th century were obviously not anticipating Henry VIIIs political problems in the 1520s when they prosecuted heretics, their use of heresy transformed the crime into a political tool that would serve Henrys needs perfectly. These conicts between Crown and Church came to a head in the case of Anne Askew and her own rich account of her experiences in 1545-6 (chapter 4).4 Her trials before the Privy Council are a particularly revealing case study in the ways heresy touched many of the political concerns associated with the Reformation, as well as the legal battle being fought for its place in the ecclesiastical or royal jurisdiction. In 1546 the kings health

43

was waning and royal ministers ranging the religious spectrum were looking to affect the ofcial religion of the next regime. Askew, who had connections with Queen Catherine Parrs circle of Protestant associates, offered an excellent opportunity to discredit Queen Catherine, and the religiously conservative faction of the Privy Council attempted to use her toward this end. In order to understand how the crime of heresy functioned in the wider Reformation, it is necessary to understand how the Reformation occurred. There are, of course, as many English Reformations as there have been historians investigating the phenomenon. Perhaps the rst view of the matter, presented by the Protestants living through it, characterized a bottom-to-top revolution that was a long time coming when Henry VIII and his Great Matter came onto the stage. More recently, historians like G.R. Elton, J.J. Scarisbrick, and Christopher Haigh have argued that the Reformation was largely a topto-bottom affair, with limited degrees of success.5 More recently still, Ethan Shagan has reframed the questions surrounding the Reformation, suggesting that the English Reformation was not done to people, it was done with them.6 The monarch, Shagan argues, lacked the bureaucracy to effect a top-to-bottom Reformation, and had to work politically on a local level. But it was not just a bureaucracy that the Crown needed. Henry VIII needed the authority to dene orthodoxy if he was to control the English church and secure Englands future and heir. Heresy offered the Crown this potential. Essential to both Churchs and Crowns efforts to control the Reformation was the crime of heresy, and their respective attempts to control its prosecution opened the door to a jurisdictional turf war that put the churchs most powerful weapon in jeopardy. Only in this legal context can we understand how in a single year, one womans heresy could be quietly scolded and then inspire a trial on which many of the kings most powerful advisers pinned their hopes for a new national religious policy.7
HERESY AND THE JURISDICTIONAL BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY

For much of English history, the crime of heresy was an excellent example of how

44

ecclesiastical and royal authorities cooperated. Before 1380 and the advent of widespread, organized heresy in England, ecclesiastical courts were the only authority that could receive reports of suspected heretics and determine the truth of such reports. When it came to executing this authority, however, bishops ran into two major problems: they could not arrest suspects and they could not execute the guilty.8 For this, they relied upon royal ofcials. Starting in 1382, Parliament passed and the king approved legislation that formalized the rights of bishops to request the aid of local royal ofcials to nd and hold suspected heretics, and to burn convicted ones.9 However, the cooperation demonstrated in the crime of heresy was not indicative of all church-lay relationships. Lay English societys organization was what contemporaries called a great chain of being where every individual knew his place and everyone answered to the authority of the monarch. Similarly, the Church was strictly hierarchical, with the pope as the undisputed top of the pyramid. In most cases, the Church and Crown coexisted beautifully, even symbiotically. England even had two court systems one royal, the other ecclesiasticalwhich operated in a complementary way.10 The potential for conict lay at the top of the respective pyramidsthe king and the pope. Should the two disagree on anything, there was no clear-cut solution as to who would win. This chapter contextualizes the crime of heresy within this conict, showing how the prosecution of heresy became one of the main tools in the battle between royal and ecclesiastical courts for jurisdictional supremacy. Before 1380, bishops had invoked royal authority only rarely to deal with heretics.11 By the 14th century, the ecclesiastical statutes that governed heresy had been working on the continent for centuries. However, they were seldom needed or used in England. Inquisitors from Rome were surprised when, in a rare series of heresy cases in 1307-9, they kept requesting English torturers yet could nd none who were competent.12 The king in 1310 agreed only to torture in which no one [was] seriously hurt.13 Regardless of whether the monarchy was opposed to torture on principle or was simply resisting a

45

foreign legal jurisdiction, it was clear that early 14th century England had little need for such serious inquisitions against heretics, and had no desire for things to change. Things began to change, however, in 1381, when a synod of the English bishops (nicknamed the Earthquake Council for a small earth tremor that occurred during it) declared the teachings of an Oxford professor named John Wyclif heretical. Wyclifs ideas, commonly grouped under the label Lollardy, were popular, and quickly spread despite the synods condemnation.14 Yet because widespread, organized heresy was new to England, English clerics had to innovate to nd the exact mechanics by which they would work with the royal courts. Both royal and ecclesiastical authorities quickly dealt with the vagueness of their procedures against heresy. In doing so, they created prosecutorial procedures that would become an important method for demarcating the jurisdictional border between royal and ecclesiastical authorities.
English Heresy: An Ecclesiastical Crime

At their most basic level, ecclesiastical courts dealt with sin. For them heresy was condemnable by religious authority. In practice, this jurisdictional theory gave the church authority over all civil matters that touched upon matters of morality or death, like marriage and wills. Any legal matter involving a religious oathand most oaths did have some religious languagefell under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, though the royal courts often fought for some of these cases where religious concerns were minimal.15 Additionally, the church claimed authority over matters involving church property, ranging from ecclesiastical taxes (tithes) to all crimes committed on church land or against clerics. They also had a limited jurisdiction of crimes where the court could pursue lawbreakers without having a victim rst petition the court (called ex ofcio powers). These crimes consisted of sexual deviancy, general disruptions of morality (e.g. public scolding), and religious dissent, ranging from blasphemy to heresy. The church courts handled all crimes peculiar to the clergy, such as the violation of a vow of celibacy, as well.16 Because heresy was one of the worst sins that a Christian could commit, canon law decreed that it belonged exclusively to the ecclesiastical courts.17

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The crime of heresy merits a denition here not just because it is the central focus of this thesis but also because it is widely misunderstood. Holding a belief contrary to the doctrine of the Church was heterodoxy, which was a theological category, not a legal one. Canon law acknowledged that an individual might accidentally hold heterodox opinions because of misinformation, often provided by a real heretic. While such an individual had to be corrected by an ecclesiastical court, generally such individuals were able to compurge themselves of the crimethat is, they could call witnesses to attest to their good character.18 A heretic became a heretic legally at the moment in an ecclesiastical trial when he refused the correction of an ecclesiastical authority: when he was heterodox, knew he was heterodox, and refused to turn to orthodox belief. Being unrepentant in the face of this correction, or relapsing into a heresy from which one had recanted, merited a defendant the penalty of death by burning. Because of its importance, the crime of heresy had a signicant legislative history within the Western Church before 1380. This legislation existed in the ius commune, the canon law common to all Christendom.19 Individual states often adapted the ius commune to their own laws and customs, and England was no exception.20 The two ecumenical councils that dealt with heresy in the greatest detail were the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and the Council of Vienne (1311-12). The Lateran IV decree established both the role of the lay government in prosecuting heresy as well as the punishments associated with the crime. The pope required all lay rulers to seek, in so far as they can, to expel from the lands subject to their jurisdiction all heretics21 In general, Lateran IV viewed kings as subservient to the Church, performing the tasks ecclesiastical authorities assigned them. Though there was a later section of Lateran IV that warned ecclesiastical courts not to infringe upon lay jurisdiction, the general tone of the language suggested that a king who neglected his obligation to punish heretics as the Church dictated lost his right to rule: Let all secular authoritiestake publicly an oath for the defence of the faith so that the supreme pontiffmay then declare his [a heretically sympathetic princes] vassals absolved from their fealty to him22 Lateran IV also imposed non-

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religious punishments on those excommunicated because they supported heretics (but were not convicted of heresy): he [the supporter] shall be branded as infamous and not be admitted to public ofcesshall be intestable [unable to write a will or receive an inheritance][and shall] be deposed from every ofce and benece23 Such persons would also lose any civil authority they once had, and all other Christians had to avoid them, an obligation that largely amounted to an economic sanction.24 These punishments were not just for heretics, but any person who dared receive, defend, and support heretics.25 Where the Fourth Lateran Council looked outward to lay governments role in heresy, the Council of Vienne looked inward to ecclesiastical procedure, specically, inquisition.26 Where in a non-inquisition trial an individual would accuse or denounce another of a crime, inquisition trials allowed the court itself to seek out lawbreakers and bring them to trial. The Council of Vienne responded to a number of complaints that inquisitors were abusing this ecclesiastical procedure by afrming the practice as a necessary tool to ensure that the catholic faith prosper in our time and that the perverseness of heresy be rooted out of Christian soil.27 Because heresy was a hidden crime, accusations by lay (read, uneducated) individuals were not as reliable as inquisition, which could summon suspected heretics to be questioned based on their public fame. The Council acknowledged several aws in the system which allowed inquisitors to abuse their power, and responded by increasing the role of bishops in rooting out and prosecuting heresy.28 Despite this blow to the power of the Roman Inquisition, Vienne afrmed the process of inquisition as a permanent xture in the anti-heretical toolbox. The 14th century ecclesiastical courts, then, had several legal options for controlling heretics. Unlike the lay court system, which had different courts for different jurisdictions, the ecclesiastical court system (much like the Church itself) was hierarchical. Each diocese in England had at their lowest level archidiaconal and consistory courts, from which petitioners could appeal their causes to a bishops court of audience. The line of appeal

48

could then extend to the archbishop of Canterbury or York, then to the pope, though this was extremely rare. While other crimes tended to start at the bottom of its hierarchy and rarely appeal up it, heresy generally had a bishops court of audience as its court of rst instance. By making heresy an exception to the ecclesiastical courts hierarchy, bishops identied it as a crime of great consequence to their diocese requiring personal Episcopal attention. However, because individual bishops had great leeway in how and when they prosecuted heretics, procedures were never uniform in the English church. A universal English campaign against heresy was only possible when the Crown involved itself in the prosecution of heresy.
English Heresy: A Royal Enforcement

Between the advent of Lollardy in the 1380s and the events that built up to the Reformation in the 1520s and 1530s, Church and Crown cooperated on prosecuting and enforcing the crime of heresy much in the way they had cooperated on other ecclesiastical crimes for the past several centuries. But during this same period, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in general was engaged with the royal courts in a struggle for jurisdictional supremacy over a variety of legal matters traditionally claimed by the Church.29 These laws had to be adapted to some degree to the customs and social realities of the many different peoples who made up the Catholic Church, but this did not mean that the ecclesiastical courts always gave custom the legal right of way.30 This led to conicts between royal and ecclesiastical courts, with royal courts asserting English legal practice in crimes over which the ecclesiastical courts claimed total jurisdiction. Before the 1530s and the Reformation, the King and Parliament passed only three statutes that affected the Churchs prosecution of heretics.31 The changes they made were substantial: they empowered royal ofcials like sheriffs to seek out and arrest heretics, and even determine by means of a quest whether the evidence against them justied a trial in the ecclesiastical courts. These changes were purely additive, and allowed the ecclesiastical courts to prosecute heretics without hindrance from the royal

49

courts. Yet somehow, without any jurisdiction-altering legislation since 1414, by 1536 the English clergy had declared its submission to the English monarch, who himself claimed total authority over his realms Church and its courts. R.H. Helmholz succinctly summarizes the jurisdictional struggles leading up to the Reformation, noting that Legal history is winners history and at the end of the day the ecclesiastical courts were losers.32 The transition from symbiotic cooperation to jurisdictional conict happened without statutory reform because everyday claimants in the ecclesiastical court system were the ones who instigated the conict. They did so by using long-standing English legal tools to transfer causes to courts of appropriate jurisdictions. For defendants in the ecclesiastical courts who believed they had been accused of a crime that rightfully belonged in the royal courts, a royal court would issue a writ of prohibition, which required the ecclesiastical trial immediately to cease.33 From their emergence in the beginning of the fourteenth century, writs of prohibition became increasingly difcult to procure, giving the ecclesiastical courts a rmer hold on their jurisdiction.34 Additionally, the ecclesiastical courts could mitigate the effects of writs of prohibitionwhile they could not resist them directly, there was nothing to stop the church court from attacking those litigants who sought them. They would do so either through a careful examination of their conduct and punishment of even slight infractions, or through prosecution for the crime of vexation of the clergy. Ultimately, a much more powerful tool for the royal courts was praemunire. The law by which royal courts prevented English subjects from acknowledging or serving a foreign power, praemunire severely restricted ecclesiastical courts ability to try causes that were not rmly within its jurisdiction.35 Praemunire forfeited their goods and lands to the Crown, and if they resisted summons to the Kings court, they were declared outlaws. One of 16th century Englands most famous cases of praemunire was the case of Richard Hunne, who in 1512 refused to pay a mortuary ne for his recently deceased newborn. His parish priest sued, Hunne counter-sued, and the legal battle escalated

50

to the point that Hunne charged his prosecutors with praemunire, which put Hunne in a secure legal position until an ecclesiastical interrogation resulted in his (possibly accidental) death.36 On a national level, when seeking greater spiritual powers over the English Church (and a 100,000 loan), Henry VIII charged the entire English clergy with praemunire, which quickly got him both items.37 Henry employed praemunire in part because the inefcacy of writs of prohibition had led to a perception that the ecclesiastical courts were unanswerable to royal authority. But because of the efcacy of praemunire, when the ecclesiastical courts attempted to protect their jurisdiction of heresy in the 1530s, they were already losing a more comprehensive jurisdictional battle. Between 1380 and 1520 the royal and ecclesiastical courts were ghting a jurisdictional war that the ecclesiastical courts were losing. Within this time frame, royal ofcials generally stayed clear of this conict. Even if they had been inclined to actively limit the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts, there was little to do that everyday litigants were not already doing: between 1476 and 1531, the ecclesiastical causes in the diocese of Licheld dropped by 33%; between 1482 and 1522 in Canterbury, 65%; between 1471 and 1514 in London, 85%.38 By the time the Reformation began at the level of Parliamentary acts and royal proclamations, everyday litigants had already undermined much of the ecclesiastical courts de facto jurisdiction.
Why Heresy?

When Henry VIII and his government did nally involve themselves in this jurisdictional conict, they faced an ecclesiastical court system already weakened by a prolonged jurisdictional struggle. Contractual law, probate, even collection of tithesall these legal areas were ideal targets for royal intervention. Why then did royal ministers, proclamations, statutes, and courts spend so much effort on achieving control of heresy? It was a crime which, compared to the rest of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, was rare and depended on technical knowledge. Additionally, its horric punishment and tendency to be prosecuted
ex ofcio made it unpopular. In many ways, the royal focus on heresy did not make sense.

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The transformation of heresy into a political crime that would suit Henrys needs was a slow one, and it is best seen with Henrys political concerns in mind. Bishops tried Lollards throughout the 15th century without any concern for a future king who would need to reform his church to supply himself with the male heir he so desperately wanted. Nevertheless, their politicization of the crime of heresy would make it the one crime that addressed all of Henry VIIIs political concerns. It was Henry VIIIs perceived need for an annulment of his and Catherine of Aragons marriage that brought the old conict between kings and popes to a head. In previous conicts, either the king and pope managed to reach a compromise or the pope would excommunicate the king, or perhaps even put all of England under interdict.39 Henrys problem with his present conict was that even if he had managed to declare his authority over the English church and translate the legal issues of marriage to the royal courts, the changes he was making in the reach of papal authority amounted to a change in orthodoxy, which was something only the Church had the authority to do. There was no mechanism for dening orthodoxy for its own sake, however: all orthodoxy was dened by the prosecution of heresy. In order to change the popes role in England, Henry needed the power to dene orthodoxy, and therefore, the power to prosecute heresy. Henry attempted to solve his problem by attacking the Church rst: he charged his clergy with praemunire, cut legal appeals and taxes to Rome, and nally declared himself Supreme Head of the English Church. Because of his actions, his conict with Rome became a question of the power of Parliaments and statutes as against Convocation and Rome: that is, English national sovereignty and Parliaments legislative authority under Henrys imperial crown.40 The word imperial reects a specic theory of sovereignty Henry had come to embrace in the 1520s. Several manuscripts supporting the kings imperial powerthat is, his power to rule without appeal or recourse to any other authority besides Godbear notes in Henrys hand.41 By 1536, Henry had statutory conrmation of his legal authority over the English church, including the prosecution of heresy.

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This newfound royal responsibility for the prosecution of heresy led Henry and Parliament to limit the ecclesiastical courts inquisitorial powers. The anti-heresy statute of 1534 limited ecclesiastical ability to try suspected heretics: a royal grand jury had to indict them or a private individual had to accuse them. Church courts could no longer charge suspected heretics by the inquisition procedure. Royal courts, however, retained this power, which they used in particular in the commissions set up under the Act of Six Articles (1539). Setting forth six articles of faith that were to be pursued especially relentlessly, the whip with six strings set up commissions that had the power to actively hunt out these heretics and bring them before the courts. Heresy was dened as a felony, and had no benet of clergy (a holdover from medieval law by which a literacy test could spare male defendants from their rst conviction of a capital crime). Most signicantly, the Act of Six Articles had dened doctrine: through the prosecution of heresy, Henry had claimed the power to dene orthodoxy. Popular reaction was extremely negative, with people accusing the Six Article commissions of secret and untrue accusations.42 They demanded reforms reecting the precedent of the anti-heresy law of 1534. The result, A Bill Concerning the VI Articles (1543), specically reacted to concerns that accusations might be made out of malice, and the uneducated layman would be unable to defend himself. As a solution, all [future] trials were to be initiated solely by indictment.43 The statute made perhaps the most dramatic change in heresy proceedings, requiring the indictment either of a quest of twelve men or of three judicial gures, including members of the Council sitting in session before an alleged heretic could be tried. The ecclesiastical courts now could only try heretics presented to them by the royal courts. These three 16th century statutes completed the prosecutorial journey heresy had been making from procedures set forth in papal decrees to a trial closely resembling a trial for a royal crime.44 The anti-heresy law of 1534 limited but did not extinguish ecclesiastical courts ex ofcio procedures for heresy. An alleged heretic now had to be indicted

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of heresy or duly accused or detected thereof by two lawful witnesses at least before being tried.45 The Act of Six Articles, enacted ve years later, appeared to retreat back to 15th century ex ofcio practices and allowed those suspected of violating one of those six doctrines to be brought before a quest under the courts suspicion.46 On top of this, witnesses could no longer be anonymous, and a quest indicted all accused heretics, further paralleling royal courts. Because ecclesiastical courts were bound to enforce royal statutes, Parliament and the king had effectively made the trial of heresy a royal one, even if it was nominally retained by the ecclesiastical courts. In 1543, the Bill Concerning the VI Articles stripped the ecclesiastical courts of their ability to hear any case that did not originate in a royal court. The royal courts had assumed full control of the crime of heresy: how heretics were detected, whether they went to trial, and what doctrine would determine their guilt. When heresy rst appeared in England in force c. 1380, the royal and ecclesiastical courts cooperated because they needed each other. The church had the lawyers and theologians to try and combat heresy, while the royal courts had the ability to arrest and burn heretics. Though both parties were essential to the process, the church was clearly the superior partner, since its condemnation of heresy implied the power to dene orthodoxy. For over a century, this was not a problem for the Crown. The legal changes surrounding the Henrician Reformation, however, began to change this. As the king replaced the pope and English doctrine became uid, the ability to dene orthodoxy (and therefore, punish heresy) became an essential step in solidifying those legal changes. This characteristic of heresy was not an inherent one, however; it grew out of over a century of prosecutions. In order to understand how heresy became the crime Henry VIII would need for his political Reformation, we will have to look at the changes in heresy trials from Lollardy to the Reformation.
IMPENITENT AND INCORRIGIBLE HERETICS: HERESYS POLITICAL EVOLUTION

Lollardy was a new kind of problem for the late 14th century English church. Before the 14th century, the clergy had had to deal with heretics, but instances of heresy were

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scarce. Bishops had managed to integrate heresy trials into regularly occurring provincial conferences of bishops (synods) that could also act as courts.47 The widespread popularity of Lollardy made this mechanism for dealing with heresy obsoletethe synods would have been overwhelmed with heresy trials. Even as early as 1381, when ecclesiastical authorities were just beginning to recognize John Wyclif and Lollardy as a problem, Lollard preachers were prominent members of widespread peasant revolts.48 Synods could deal with occasional and unorganized heresy, but a heretical movement that partially propelled a national revolt was beyond their administrative abilities. Individual bishops quickly took over heresy prosecution within their own dioceses, trying heretics in their courts of audience. However, the ecclesiastical courts could not tackle widespread heresy without royal support. Besides their inability to execute convicted heretics, the ecclesiastical courts lacked the manpower to detect and detain suspected heretics. The need for such powers led both the Church and the Crown to give what had been the nebulous crime of heresy concrete legal denitions and procedures. Royal ofcials received new statutory authority from the King and Parliament to detect and detain heretics, though always subordinate to ecclesiastical authority.49 In practice, this translated to justices of the peace, sheriffs, and other royal ofcers checking preaching licenses and making book raids to check for heretical material.50 The Church also modied its approach to heresy. The archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, published a set of Constitutions in 1409 that introduced the clergy to the new procedures being used against heretics.51 Arundel required his bishops to make frequent visitations to their parishes to detect and prosecute heresy, and he emphasized the executive role of royal courts. The standards for preachers licenses also became stricter. By 1414, the new laws and procedures dictating the prosecutions of heretics in England were set.
Lollardy, Heresy, and Submission in 15th Century Norwich

Throughout this legal reformation of the crime of heresy, the cooperation of Church and Crown was paramount. Often at ecclesiastical prompting, royal statutes increased the role

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of the lay courts in heresy prosecution, to the point that in 1414, royal ofcials could bring suspected heretics before their own grand juries to determine whether they should be remanded to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction.52 These grand juries (called quests) respected the authority of ecclesiastical courts, since a quest could not determine a suspected heretics guilt or innocence, only whether he or she would go to ecclesiastical trial. Yet if the quest determined that a suspected heretic should go to trial, the ecclesiastical court would not accept any evidence from the quest, only taking evidence introduced to the ecclesiastical trial by the standards of canon law, which were often stricter than the rules of evidence in royal courts.53 In the rst organized campaigns against heresy in the early 15th century, royal courts and concerns were subordinate to ecclesiastical ones. While bishops clearly treated heresy as a crime with important political concerns, the politics they considered often had little connection to political concerns involving the Crown. Some of the early Lollard trialsfor example, the trials of several inhabitants of the diocese of Norwich for heresy in 1428-31 before Bishop William Alnwickshow the nature of this involvement. Though it was the conict between king and pope that would bring royal and ecclesiastical political tensions to a head in the Reformation, in 1428 England papal authority was neither loved nor hated: it was not important enough for such strong emotions.54 There was a strict chain of command in the English church, and some political concerns did trickle down it and affect the prosecution of heresy, but in Norwich, such international concerns only affected the timing of Bishop Alnwicks antiheresy campaign. The other political issues were much more local. The prosecutors in the Norwich trials are notable mostly for their restraint: they functioned independently of royal ofcials as often as they could, avoided prosecuting relapsed heretics (who by canon law would have had to have been burnt), and assigned penances that demonstrated the Churchs authority over orthodoxy without making martyrs. This shift in policy does not seem to have been a reaction to the situation on the ground. There is no evidence that the clergy of Norwich was concerned about the level of Lollard

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activity in their diocese before 1428. Indeed, N.P. Tanner notes that ...no parish priest, rural dean or archdeacon is mentioned as attending the trial of a person subject to his jurisdiction. Their absence underlines the fact that the initiative in the persecution seems to have come at the diocesan rather than at more local levels.55 Additionally, if Lollards were seeking converts, they could do so in private forums, making their detection unlikely unless ecclesiastical authorities were actively searching for them.56 Most of those accused of heresy between 1428 and 1431 were either family or neighbors; they would not have needed public preaching to hear their relatives thoughts on religion. Defendants claimed to have learned Lollard doctrines from older members of the community, who seemed to serve as teachers.57 Lollards were certainly a minority in the population, but if any other members of the community had felt the need to bring them to trial for their heresy, they had ample opportunity before 1428. The next logical source of prosecution was Norwichs bishop Alnwick, who had in his mind the political concerns of the upcoming ecclesiastical council and the decision of his peers to condemn Wyclif that very year. Not even Alnwick, however, was out for blood: none of the Norwich heresy trials resulted in a death sentence. None of the suspected heretics brought to trial had received previous heresy convictions, and all were willing to abjure. Six leaders, some of whom had been suspected of heresy in Kent, ed Norwich and escaped prosecution.58 Aside from these leaders, the Lollards brought to trial were fairly harmless by clerical standards. Since the clergy still located authority in written Latin texts, there was little chance in their minds that these illiterate Lollards would spread heresy effectively on any signicant scale.59 Because Lollardy had been present in Norwich for several generations, there were probably some relapsed heretics of whom ecclesiastical authorities could make an example, had they chosen to. Instead, they prosecuted new people and assigned a variety of different penances, ranging from oggings to public recantations.60 By choosing penances that were public but not fatal, heresy prosecutors reafrmed the authority of the church without the risk of inaming the Lollard community by creating martyrs. For

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the prosecutors of heresy, reasserting the churchs institutional and legal power was just as important, if not more so than, reasserting doctrine. Indeed, it is likely that to prosecutors, the two ideas were not entirely distinct. This was the issue central to the trials themselves. The rst part of any trial was the interrogation of the defendant, which by 1428 consisted of a set of questions common to most dioceses. One extant questionnaire, found in the register of Bishop Thomas Polton of Worchester (. 1426-33), divides the questions into those for theologians and those for lawyers.61 Forty questions for the lawyer came rst, as opposed to the theologians twenty-one. These forty questions cover items that looked like purely religious questions: the efcacy of auricular confession, the necessity of baptism in water, the ability of a priest to transubstantiate bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. But rather than the sacraments, they focus on a priests or the churchs authority to complete spiritual actions; for instance, Also whether a bishop or priest, existing in mortal sin, ordains, consecrates, completes, or baptizes.62 Those items that did deal with legal procedures generally focused on instruments of correction used to enforce this authority, like excommunication. The questions for theologians dealt with the institutions and sacraments themselves, but there was no new theological material covered. Some of the phrases are even copied directly from the lawyers questions. This lack of new material suggests that to prosecutors, the main offense of a heretic was not her heterodoxy, but rather her refusal to submit to ecclesiastical authority.63 If royal ofcials played any substantive role in the Norwich heresy prosecutions, Alnwicks records do not show it. At the beginning of each trial, the record names all the ofcials present. Some ofcials were present throughout the trials, like the bishop or his chancellor, or the scribe John Excestr, whom the diocese of Norwich employed. There were also often experts in various areas of canon law, or theologians, all of whom were named.64 Alnwicks records name no royal ofcials. In the published collection of these trials, Tanner includes a record of the delivery of three of the Norwich suspects to a royal

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jail, showing Alnwick depended to at least some degree on royal support.65 But because his court avoided convicting relapsed or recalcitrant heretics, Alnwick did not need royal ofcials to execute any of the defendants. The absence of royal quests in detecting the suspected heretics only underlines that ecclesiastical, rather than royal, politics sparked Alnwicks anti-heresy campaign.
Heresy, Burning, and Authority in 16th Century Kent

Those who were brought to trial for heresy in Kent 1511-12 would have had little theological disagreement with their Lollard predecessors in 1428 Norwich. The trials abjurations feature many of the same transgressions: denial of transubstantiation, denial of the virtue of pilgrimages, aversion from the use of images in worship, etc.66 Also like the Norwich Lollards, most of those being tried in Kent were willing to abjure their heresies to avoid being burnt at the stake. The Kentish defendants received public and humiliating penances that displayed their deference to ecclesiastical authority, much like those penances of over eighty years prior.67 There were, however, ve heretics out of the fty-three defendants who refused to abjure. The court of Archbishop William Warham convicted them as relapsed or obdurate heretics and handed them over to the sheriff of Kent, who burned them at the stake.68 These trials best show the political changes that had occurred since the Norwich heresy trials because it is here that the ecclesiastical authorities were pushed to assign the fatal punishment no bishop should ever have wanted to order.69 Like the trials in Norwich, the Kent heresy trials were inquisition trialsthat is, they were initiated by the ecclesiastical court and not by individual persons or corporations. All of the Kent heresy proceedings were ex ofcio mero, or at the complete discretion of the ecclesiastical courts judge.70 Indeed, these inquisitions seem to have come at the personal initiative of Archbishop Warham, who presided over all but three trials himself. He was not alone: as Archbishop Warham was conducting his heresy campaign in Kent, Bishops Fitzjames, Smith, and Blyth were conducting their own in London, the Chilterns,

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and Coventry.71 Heretics in Kent and elsewhere at this time were parts of developed Lollard communities that had existed for generations relatively untroubledpersecuted enough to remain unobtrusive, but not enough to renounce their beliefs.72 It is, however, noteworthy that these prosecutions occurred during a period of strong anticlericalism in England. Indeed, it is their timing that dened the political concerns with which the Kent trials dealt. The clerical monopoly on the Lord Chancellorship, and the subsequent consolidation of royal and ecclesiastical power under that ofce, was unpopular, and becoming more so as the 16th century progressed.73 While anticlericalism was nothing new in England, royal interest in it was, and the 1510s witnessed signicant royal encroachment on perceived ecclesiastical abuses. The most famous case associated with this was the case of Richard Hunne, who responded to charges of heresy with countersuits of slander and
praemunire in 1514.74 But his case, while an excellent case study of anticlericalism

in the 1510s, stood in the midst of signicant national and international attacks on clerical privileges. In 1512, Parliament passed and the King approved the Criminous Clerks Act, which sought to limit clerical immunity from royal prosecution by dividing clerics into major orders and lesser orders, with the lesser orders being subject to royal courts authority. Pope Leo X responded in 1514 with a papal bull Conciliorum oecumenicorum Decreta declaring (not for the rst time) that clerics were never subject to laymens authority.75 Convocation took this as its cue and, in 1515, summoned Dr. Henry Standish, a defender of the Criminous Clerks Act, to answer questions regarding the politics behind it.76 Though the ecclesiastical judges questioning Standish quickly retreated before the kings threat of praemunire, they did have enough time to frame their political concerns in four questions: (1) Can a secular court convent [summon] clergy before it? (2) Are minor orders holy or not? (3) Does a constitution ordained by pope and clergy bind a country whose use is to the contrary? (4) Can a temporal ruler restrain a bishop?77

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These questions show that ecclesiastical authorities in the 1510s feared signicant royal encroachment on their jurisdiction, fueled by anticlericalism. Bishops across England saw the prosecution of heresy as the natural way to combat both the encroachment and the anticlericalism,78 their rationale being that heresy, as an act of point-blank deance of the clergy, was the most radical form of anticlericalism. Ecclesiastical authorities fears were proven well founded by ve obstinate and recalcitrant heretics in 1511-12 Kent. Of the ve Kentish defendants who refused to abjure, the court labeled John Browne as a relapsed and incorrigible heretic79 and Robert Harryson an impenitent and incorrigible heretic.80 Both had denied all charges against them, and maintained their innocence after hearing the depositions made against them, refusing to abjure. The other three, Agnes Grebill, Edward Walker, and William Carder, were rst-time offenders, and Walker and Grebill maintained their innocence to the end of the trials, claiming that the witnesses speaking against them were lying.81 Carder actually admitted to the tenth charge against him, stating That it is enough to pray to God almighty and alone and therefore it need not [i.e., it is not necessary] to pray to saints for any mediation.82 Archbishop Warham did not have to kill these ve defendants, barring John Browne (who as a relapsed heretic would be burnt regardless of his contrition) and William Carder (who admitted to heresy). Indeed, clemency was the route most of those brought to trial took, Warham assigning a number of non-lethal penances. Bishops had a great deal of leeway when deciding penances, and Archbishop Warham took advantage of this to craft penances particularly appropriate to the heterodoxies professed.83 For instance, if a defendant abjured that he believed fasting to be unnecessary, he might be restricted to a diet of bread and water on Wednesdays and Fridays for the rest of his life. In most penances, a convicted heretic had to submit to his priest in a way specic to his heterodoxy. The specicity in these penances is a marked change from the 1428 Norwich trials, where penances had tended to be general, like carrying a

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candle in procession or wearing a badge on ones clothing. Archbishop Warhams careful association of ecclesiastic authority with specic doctrines underlined the Churchs ability to dene orthodox doctrine. This ability of the Churchs was the one that Warham chose to highlight in contrast to royal infringement on clerical privilege like the Criminous Clerks Act of 1512. His response to an attack on the ecclesiastical jurisdiction was to remind the royal government that regardless of its political concerns, the Church was the only institution with the authority to dene sin and orthodoxy, the power on which its jurisdiction was predicated. One of Warhams penances illustrates how he used them to stress ecclesiastical authority over royal authority. Throughout the trials, royal ofcials played only a small part: the only lay individuals the records mention are a number of notariorum publicorum, probably public notaries who served a secretarial role.84 Warham was able to avoid using royal ofcials for any tasks other than the burning of the ve relapsed or incorrigible heretics. Though the Church technically ordered the burnings, witnesses would see the burnings carried out by royal ofcials, stressing their role rather than the Churchs in this ceremony of authority. To counter this, Warham required the rst seven abjurants to watch the burning of William Carder.85 For those seven abjurants, no penance could have expressed this message of submission to the clergy more clearly than being forced to watch the gruesome fate an abjurant would face if she relapsed. But beyond that, those witnessing Carders burning of their own volition (burnings were in general wellattended) would have seen ecclesiastical ofcials conrming that the seven abjurants were fullling their sentence. Warhams penance ensured that the Church was a prominent participant in a ceremony designed to showcase the ecclesiastical authority. As royal courts continued their encroachment on the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, bishops across England saw heresy as their best tool to ght back. In many ways, their choice was backed up by historical precedent: in England as in the rest of Europe, heresy prosecution had been an effective way to control heretics throughout

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the social spectrum, whether their heresy focused on more theological questions of transubstantiation or more political ones of the authority of the pope. Indeed, for most of pre-Reformation Europe, this distinction between theology and politics does not seem to have existed; deance of any authority was a threat to all authority. Henry VIIIs Great Matter, however, introduced a new kind of political problem into the relationship between Crown and Church in England. Organized heresy was spreading through Europe as never before, and Henry seemed willing to do anything to annul his rst marriage and secure a male heir. His decisions and the reactions of the English church would create a truly English crime of heresy, one which would play an integral role in the Reformation.
ROYAL DOCTRINE, IMPERIAL AUTHORITY

One of the most difcult things for historians of the English Reformation to do is to look at the events of the 1520s and 1530s and analyze them as though they did not know a long-term Protestant Reformation was on the horizon. Those living and legislating in that period certainly did not. Royal councilors in the late 1520s and early 1530s focused overwhelmingly on the problem of the kings marriage, and though the individual religious beliefs and ambitions of political heavyweights like Thomas Cromwell and Anne Boleyn doubtlessly played some role in how far religious reform went, the question of the kings right to divorce his wife was the basic political concern of the Reformation. For this reason, many historians have seen the actions of the Crown at the beginning of the Henrician Reformation, especially the statutes passed by the Reformation Parliament, as solutions to specic facets of the problem of the kings authority.86 What has not received as much attention is the role heresy played as one of these solutions. By the 1511-12 campaign in Kent by Archbishop Warham, bishops across England were using the prosecution of heresy to re-establish the church as the undisputed authority in matters of orthodoxy. When it came to the written law of England and of the Church, ecclesiastical authorities still possessed the upper hand. At the most basic level, however politely phrased the request may have been, Contra Lollardos gave the ecclesiastical

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courts the authority to order their royal counterparts to execute English subjects.87 But in the light of Henrys need for a divorce, as well as his need to defy papal authority to get it, the royal jurisdiction found itself in need of the power to dene orthodoxy. Only with this kind of authority would Henry be able to restructure the English church to suit his needs. But it was not only ecclesiastical judges who could cause the crown problems when it came to heresy. Many English subjects, almost all of whom would have thought themselves good Catholics until the Reformation, thought their kings actions against the Church were heretical. The problem of English subjects making these thoughts public was common enough that local ofcials reported such crimes straight to Thomas Cromwell, who led the enforcement of the Reformation.88 Some dissidents even leveled direct threats against the kings person.89 The king, in his attempt to change the hierarchy of the English church, risked presenting himself as a heretic to his Catholic subjects. Fortunately for Henry, the Church had effectively employed a legal tool to defend itself against those who questioned its authority for centuries: the prosecution of heresy. The monarchy gained its control over the crime of heresy and used it to neutralize the threat of heretics, who were by 1534 a uid legal category because of the political changes associated with the crime.
Sir Thomas More: The Kings Good Servant

Despite the frequent protestations of Mores biographers and More himself, Sir Thomas More desired a prominent position in royal government.90 Henry VIII populated his court with distinguished intellectuals and humanists, and Mores status as Englands foremost humanist made Henrys attraction to him almost inevitable.91 More advanced his public career swiftly thanks to the inuence of Lord Chancellor Thomas Wolsey. More eventually served as Henrys personal secretary in 1525, and the king often sought him out for conversations about astronomy, science and religion, even relying on More to help him write Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, the anti-Lutheran tract that won Henry the title Defender of the Faith from the pope.92

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When Sir Thomas More succeeded Cardinal Wolsey as Henry VIIIs Lord Chancellor in October 1529, he began his appointment with a serious handicap: he was unable in good conscience openly to support the kings attempt to divorce his wife. However, he was a layman and gifted common lawyer who, thanks to Wolseys training, knew the ins and outs of the English political system intimately. In the wake of Englands growing anticlericalism, stoked as it had been by Wolseys unpopular policies, More was the acceptable compromise candidate.93 Despite all these positive qualities, More could not afford to pursue his preferred policy in regard to the divorce through standard channels like the Council and Parliamentno royal ofcial was secure in his position, and outright opposition to the divorce in 1529 was a painful method of political suicide. While More was nominally the head of the Council, his view of the divorce meant he was left out of many policy decisions.94 This did not mean that More was powerless. Just as bishops before him had done, More reacted to the royal jurisdictions encroachment on the ecclesiastical courts by prosecuting heretics and thereby demonstrating the Crowns support of the Churchs recent antiheresy campaigns. In the end, however, Mores active prosecution of heretics served to make the translation of the crime to the royal jurisdiction possible. More did not wait until he was Lord Chancellor to begin exercising what authority he could over English heretics. In July of 1527, as a member of the Council, he helped write a Star Chamber order against heresy and seditious preaching; six months later, he helped enforce it by leading a raid of Londons docks in search of vernacular Bibles.95 Once Lord Chancellor, he began to exercise his authority under the Anti-Heresy Law of 1414 to bring suspected heretics before royal quests. In some cases, he even imprisoned suspected heretics at his home in Chelsea until they could face trial.96 If he was successful in indicting suspected heretics before a grand jury, the cases would be remanded to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction and beyond Mores inuence. More, however, was nothing if not legally creative, and he managed to extend his ofces control over

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heresy by use of royal proclamations.97 To disobey a royal proclamation was a crime that More used to prosecute heresy indirectly. More likely helped write royal proclamations issued on 22 June 1530 and later the same year that made lists of heretical books.98 If anyone possessed the books listed in these proclamations, More could to try them in the Court of Star Chamber for the crime of disregarding a royal proclamation. He had in effect moved the prosecution of heresy into a royal court, albeit with a much lighter penalty. Nevertheless, More had put the Court of Star Chamber squarely behind the Churchs anti-heresy efforts. Henry VIII initially supported his Lord Chancellors efforts, personally admonishing Justices of the Peace in a special Star Chamber session to root out holders of heretical books.99 While he and More were working in the same direction when it came to Star Chambers prosecution of heresy, they both had different political motives.100 As More pushed the Anti-Heresy Law of 1414 to its limits and beyond to bolster the Church, Henry pushed the English clergy to their limits to get them to accept his Supreme Headship over the English church.101 As the king was preparing the statutory elements that would become the Reformation, More was unintentionally preparing the royal courts to enforce Henrys doctrinal legislation. Perhaps Mores greatest, if unwitting, contribution to the ability of the royal courts to enforce royally sanctioned doctrinal change was his defense of the ecclesiastical courts
ex ofcio procedures, specically, that of inquisition. Heresys ex ofcio component

was essential to making this crime of the interior forum enforceable. More did this mainly in The Debellation of Salem and Bizance (1533), a work he published after his disagreements with Henry had become too much and he had resigned as Lord Chancellor. The Debellation was Mores defense of his previous work, The Apology (1533), which itself had been a response to an anonymous pamphleteer (most likely Christopher St. German, a royal councilor) attacking his positions.102 Most of St. Germans attacks rested on the perceived injustices and abuses associated with the

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prosecution of heresy, particularly inquisition trials. Mores defense, then, defended the inquisitorial process as well as Mores own use of it while Lord Chancellor.103 Unlike St. German, who was a gifted common lawyer, More was both an expert common lawyer and adept at canon law.104 His defense of inquisition relied a great deal on drawing similarities between the two systems. In terms of the statutes regarding heresy, More saw no reason in the calls of councilors like St. German to repeal the canon law that conicted with English law because the two systems were completely complementary.105 The Crown and Church, More said, were symbiotic, like the husband [who] would be loath to hear any evil spoken of his wife.106 The Church prosecuted heretics to protect the realm against the spiritual disease that was their heresy, and the Crown assisted these prosecutions because if the threat of lethal force were lifted, the streets were well likely to swarm full of heretics.107 For the crime of heresy, More denied that there was a jurisdictional struggle, and he maintained that the Crowns actions against heresy (which he instigated while Lord Chancellor) were both appropriate and necessary. To defend the process of inquisition, More made several parallels to the common law. In his Apology, More had pointed out that the royal courts often used inquisition.108 To suggest the ecclesiastical courts conne themselves only to accusation or denunciation was hypocritical and foolish. Take as an example the theft of a horse, More wrote. Would one honestly nd the thief, tell him of ones suspicions, but not prosecute him if he promised not to steal again? More phrased the problem using language common to the ecclesiastical courts: to a thief, would one go give him a monition rst and then if he say that he did it not or that he would do so no more, take all the matter for safe?109 Of course notit made sense to gather evidence without the suspects knowledge, then bring that evidence to the proper authority, who could make an arrest.110 Inquisition was both an English and ecclesiastical procedure, one which both clerics and royal ofcials had an obligation to use if they were to protect the realm from heresy. This was a legal theory that Henry VIII would successfully employ as the crime of heresy translated to the royal courts.

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Political Doctrine

By 1532, the Crown was in an excellent position to prosecute heresy: it had blocked appeals to Rome, weakened the ecclesiastical jurisdiction generally, and made signicant encroachments on the crime of heresy specically. Yet the monarchy moved very cautiously when it came to taking that nal step. In the rst act of the Reformation, the Act in Restraint of Appeals to Rome (1532), heresy was an implicit exception, and was not restricted by statute until the Act of Supremacy in 1534.111 The rst statute to specically mention doctrine was the Act of VI Articles in 1539a decade after More began transforming the Court of Star Chamber into a court that could try heresy. The Reformation came in small parcels which were not worth a ght with the royal government to most English subjects.112 By taking these slow political steps to control orthodoxy (both by prosecuting heresy and legislating doctrine), Henry avoided public revolt as he changed the structure and role of the English church. The exception to this was the Pilgrimage of Grace, a revolt in 1536 which was successfully subdued without major concessions by the monarchy. Important pieces of legislation, because of the time they took to craft and pass Parliament, show the Crowns response to the major religious crises of the Henrician Reformation. Henrys royal proclamations, on the other hand, required no passage of Parliament, and the frequency with which Henry issued them makes them a more reliable indicator of what the crown wished to do with doctrine, rather than what it had to do in reaction to a crisis. These proclamations, which pre-empted many of the issues of the Reformation or headed them off before they became problems big enough to be brought before Parliament, reect the Reformation that the monarchy planned. Henry VIIIs rst proclamation mentioning heresy came before the political problems that would set off the Reformation had begun in earnest, and therefore reected the relationship between Crown and Church that had been standard for centuries. On 20 October 1521, Henry declared that all royal agents in the vicinity of the diocese of

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Lincoln were to aid the bishop of Lincoln against heretics, that they [the bishop and his supporters] nor any of them shall bodily be hurt or damaged by any of the said heretics or their fautors [supporters].113 The rest of the proclamation essentially restates the obligations of the royal courts under Contra Lollardos the Anti-Heresy Law of 1414. This was the only royal proclamation regarding heresy that was issued before More became Lord Chancellor, and should be kept in mind as a baseline as the crown began to go beyond basic enforcement of the law. The royal proclamations do not mention heresy again until 1530, when More probably helped compose two anti-heresy proclamations.114 Again, both proclamations spend time restating Contra Lollardos and the Anti-Heresy Law of 1414, and the royal government shows some deference to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction by consulting with a sufcient number of discreet, virtuous, and well-learned personages in divinity to create a list of prohibited books, though the selection of these personages seemed to be completely left to Henry.115 However, the focus of the proclamations had shifted from support of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. According to the proclamation, the king had taken an interest in the publication of heretical books out of the singular love and affection that he beareth...specially to the salvation of their [his subjects] souls, according to his ofce and duty in that behalf...116 The syntax here is important: Henry claims that he has an ofce and duty in that behalf, with that referring to the salvation of [his subjects] souls. According to the fourth Lateran Council, this ofce and duty for salvation did not belong to the king at all; it belonged to the pope.117 When a lay prince aided in the prosecution of heretics, he was doing so out of obligation to the papacy, not the cure of his subjects souls. This proclamation, though subtly, was claiming a new religious authority for the king. The monarchy also began to encroach on enforcementall those who were found with illicit books were to be reported not to the local bishop, but to the kings Council.118

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In 1532, Parliament petitioned the king to address the abuses of the ecclesiastical courts, which have made and daily make divers fashions of laws and ordinances concerning temporal things. Specically, in the Supplication Against the Ordinaries, Parliament attacked ecclesiastical courts ex ofcio proceedings as obtuse, secret, and corrupt.119 The result of these complaints was the Anti-Heresy Statute of 1534, which besides calling for enforcement of standards already existing in canon law, extended the power of the royal courts to indict suspected heretics before a grand jury: the ecclesiastical courts could now only try heretics by individual accusation or indictment by a royal quest.120 The Supplication and its subsequent legislation do not mention, however, that these royal courts had the same ex ofcio powers as the ecclesiastical courts, as More had demonstrated to great effect in Star Chamber. The events of 1532-4 went a long way in securing royal authority over the crime of heresy, even though the crown was not yet enforcing any doctrine directly. This was not to last very long. A 1535 proclamation ordered all Anabaptists to depart the realm.121 Anabaptists were nowhere in a favorable social position; their support of doctrines like adult baptism ensured that both Catholics and other Protestants counted them as heretics. Henrys declaration of their heresy was not radical. However it is not the doctrine in question that matters so much as the source of the authority denouncing it. The proclamation opens, The Kings most royal majesty, being supreme head in earth
under God of the Church of England, always intending to defend and maintain the

faith of Christ and sacraments of Holy Church... (my emphasis) and goes on to ban all Anabaptists from the realm on pain of death.122 Considering this direct use of the kings new authority, coupled with the fact that it was so recently gained, suggests that this proclamation against Anabaptists (who had been a problem in England for some time before 1535) may have been a planned exercise of the Supreme Headship, perhaps even a celebration of it. Henrys decision to target Anabaptism was likely a move to reassure his allies that England would not devolve into Germanys state of religious war (a state blamed partially on Anabaptists), but this diplomatic concern is secondary to the signicance of

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Henry exercising his Supreme Headship to dene and punish heresy. The monarchy was, for the rst time, stepping squarely into the toes of the Church as a prosecutor of heresy. More proclamations citing the Supreme Headship soon followed, and covered a variety of themes from the unlicensed publishing of scripture to the religious education of children. Of these proclamations, there is one set that best illustrates the new royal assumption of ecclesiastical powers. In 1538, 1542, and 1543, royal proclamations announced a dispensation of the Lenten fast of white meats (milk, butter, cheese, etc.).123 This religious action was signicant and not without some irony. Canon lawwhich, except for those parts that referenced the pope or were directly contrary to English law, was still the religious law of Englandprohibited eating white meats during Lent.124 The pope, however, could dispense canon law. The kings dispensation, minor though it was, was a signicant legal power that, a decade previous, the crown would have had no authority to execute. After having thoroughly vilied the pope and his corrupt dispensations of canon law, Henry assumed that very legal power. These papal actions of the kings, though ironic at rst glance, in many ways were the logical conclusion of the legal changes that had occurred in the past decade. After removing the pope from the top of the ecclesiastical legal system, Henry VIII spent a great deal of effort trying to keep his English church doctrinally static. Attempts at reforming canon law did not receive a great deal of royal or parliamentarian support, and ultimately failed.125 Yet someone still needed to take the judicial position of the pope, not simply in matters of appeal (which rarely made it past the archiepiscopal level in any case) but in matters of doctrine. A kingship that was trying to acquire the stature of imperium could not allow bishops to oppose its denitions orthodoxy and heresy. But bishops were not the only sources of problems for Henry: even at the lowest social levels, his subjects were beginning to invoke fundamental principles associated with the crimes of heresy and treason against their king. It is in these cases that the crime and prosecution of heresy reached its full potential as a political tool of the Reformation.

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The King as Heretic

In his book Popular Politics and the English Reformation, Ethan Shagan redened the questions surrounding the English reformation suggesting that it was a political interaction and that historians should focus on how that interaction happened.126 While much of this thesis has focused on how powerful ofcials used heresy to affect the Reformation, English subjects far lower on the social scale understood and used the crime of heresy in much the same way their social superiors did. It was for good reason that the treason laws of this period added calling the king a heretic to their lists of offenses: some English subjects were doing just that.127 The evidence begins, as all good evidence should, with a brawl in a bar. One day in 1534 Cambridge, a hostler and a servant outside the White Horse pub began an impromptu theological debate.128 The hostler, who remains nameless, remarked casually that there was no pope, only a bishop of Rome. Henry Kylbie, the servant, told the hostler that anyone believing such a thing was a heretic. The hostler noted that the king shared his belief, leading Kylbie to conclude quite logically (if dangerously) that the king must then be a heretic. Having become by this point quite excited, Kylbie launched into an impassioned speech against the kings recent divorce and his marriage to Anne Boleyn. The hostler, equally roused, attacked Kylbie and in a moment of supreme legal irony, Kylbie broke the hostlers head with a log or faggot, a tool intimately associated with the punishment of heresy. It is at this point that local law enforcement became involved. When they examined Kylbie, there was relatively little focus on his violence against the hostler. Instead, the concern of the examiners lay in where Kylbie learned his traitorous ideas. His master, Mr. Pachett, was a major suspectthe examiners asked how long Kylbie had been in Pachetts service, whether Kylbie had heard him speaking about the king or the bishop of Rome, whether Pachett had listened to others speak about the king or the bishop of Rome, etc. Kylbie denied his master had had any involvement in these dangerous statements, claiming that he kept much at home.129

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The royal ofcials investigation of Kylbie is quite similar to royal investigations of suspected heretics before the Reformation. They attempted to discover the extent of the heretical community, who the leaders were, and what ideas they were teaching. There is, however, a notable difference in Kylbies case: Kylbie professed no heretical beliefs. Instead, he made a legal charge of heresy against the king, albeit an informal one he probably did not plan to bring to court. Kylbie, unhappy with the political changes surrounding the Reformation and the kings remarriage, expressed his displeasure by accusing the king of a crime, the reaction to which was a royal interrogation similar to the interrogations in the Norwich and Kent heresy trials. Those ghting for and against the Reformation both found ways to use the crime of heresy to their advantage. It is difcult to see how the same circumstances could produce both the violent threats above and a Parliament that would petition the king for his protection, saying:
Also divers and many of your said most humble and obedient subjects, and specially those that be of the poorest sort within this your realm, be daily convented and called before the said spiritual Ordinaries, their commissaries and substitutes, ex ofcio, sometimes at the pleasures of the said Ordinaries, their commissaries and substitutes, for displeasure, without any provable cause130

At the same time English subjects were threatening to make a mockery with the kings crown because of his claim to heretical powers, others were pleading with him to use those powers to further castrate the ecclesiastical courts. What is relevant here is not that the Supreme Headship was a contentious issuethat is practically a given. What is relevant is that both sides framed the debate in terms of heresy, whether accusing the king of being a heretic or using heresy as the denition of political overreaching. Since Englands rst exposure to heresy in the late fourteenth century, heresy trials had dealt with issues of political authority. Even though the theological questions involved rarely changed, the reasons people as diverse as bishops and hostlers invoked

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heresy changed a great deal, as did the political issues associated with it. In such an environment, religious dissent of even small magnitude was enough only to threaten the safety of nearby souls, but also to threaten a new form of kingship. This was the case in 1545, when a young evangelical preacher from Lincolnshire was brought to the attention of the bishop of London. Less than a year later, she would face the Privy Council, defy some of the most powerful royal ministers in England, and be tortured by them. Her trial shows how, by the end of Henry VIIIs reign, heresy and the politics of the Reformation had become inseparable.
THE TRIALS OF ANNE ASKEW: A PROSECUTORIAL VICTORY?

The heresy trials of Anne Askew (1521-1546; trials 1545-6) were as much causes
clbres to English Protestants in their own time as they are to historians of early modern

England today. To those living directly after her trial, Askews mighty conicts pitted a gentlewoman very young, dainty, and tender against false Christians and blasphemous apostates who made Askew the rst woman to be racked in the Tower of London.131 To historians, her book-length Examinations recounting her trials provide a level of detail seldom seen in heresy trials (or most trials of any kind). Much of the scholarship on Askew and her trials has focused on Askews gender, her hermeneutic skill, and her theology. Between her detection and her execution, Anne Askew would be tried three times for heresy. In all three trials, she was charged with sacramentarianism, a heresy under the Six Articles Act that held that the bread and wine of the Mass were not truly transformed into the body and blood of Christ.132 This was a violation of the acts rst article, which held the more serious punishment of burning without the option of recantation. Her rst arraignment was in March 1545. Bishop Bonner, Bishop of London, allowed her to abjure her heresy and released her, despite her being a combative defendant. On 13 June 1545, a date she does not mention in her Examinations, Askew was again brought to trial as a heretic. However, the court was unable to nd any witnesses against her, and released her.133 Her last trial, in June 1546, was held before Bishop Stephen Gardiner of

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Winchester and the Privy Council, which besides being a vessel for executive power was also a court of equity. The Council tried her under the Act of Six Articles, found her guilty, and sentenced her to death by burning. After her sentence, members of the Council asked her to give the names of her conspirators (they helpfully provided suggestions from high-ranking noblewomen); when she refused, they tortured her. She refused to name names and was burnt on 16 July 1546. In the summer of 1546, it was clear that Henry VIIIs death was imminent, and that his young son Edward would need a regent. The identity of that regent would likely determine the religious future of England. Unsurprisingly, the Council broke into factions along conservative and Protestant lines. Both of the bishops who would try AskewBishop Bonner of London and Bishop Gardiner of Winchesterbelonged to the conservative faction, and would later serve as inuential bishops in Catholic Queen Marys court. At the center of the Protestant faction was Queen Catherine Parr, whose religious and intellectual sympathies toward Protestants were well known at the time of Askews trials. When Privy Council members tortured Askew and asked her to name conspirators, those names suggested by her inquisitors were noblewomen close to Catherine Parr.134 It is likely that the conservative faction was trying to use Askew to besmirch Parr in the eyes of the king and weaken her inuence at court. Well off and reasonably well connected, Anne Askew married Thomas Kyme after her older sister Martha, Kymes then-ance, died.135 Unlike her Catholic husband, Askew had grown up in a Protestant-leaning household, where her Protestant theology and familiarity with the bible may have originated.136 After giving her husband two children, Askew left him and attempted to secure an annulment in London.137 The commentary on her Examination suggests that Askews marriage to Kyme was unhappy from the beginning, and she was nally driven to leave him because, according to scripture, a wife should leave an unbelieving husband.138

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There is a very fundamental problem when discussing Askews recording of her trial: technically, Askews Examinations do not exist. What are extant are two editions of the
Examinations by the apologists and martyrologists John Bale (1495-1563) and John

Foxe (1517-1587).139 Whereas the evidence for heresy trials in previous chapters comes largely from legal documents preserved in bishops registers, Bale and Foxe form a narrative around Askews trial.140 Askews own bias shines through, as her autobiography is far more than a secretarial account of her trial.141 Gardiner makes it clear in a letter to Lord Somerset that he agreed with this sentiment: at the same time it is taught that all men be liars, at the selfsame time almost every man would be believed; and amongst them Bale, when his untruth appeareth evidently in the setting forth of the examination of Anne Askew, which is utterly misreported.142 Despite this editorial bias, Bales edition, minus his elucidation, provides some hope for those reconstructing the course of the cases prosecution.143 Since Askews likely purpose in publishing her Examinations was to quell rumors of her apostasy from the Protestant cause, the Examinations can be read and relied upon with that bias in mind.144
Bonners Prosecution

After traveling to London in 1545, Anne Askew attracted the attention of a Mr. Wadloe, who was working for the Six Articles commission in London.145 In March of that year, she was brought before a quest of twelve men (as required under 35 Henry VIII c. 5) under the chairmanship of a London merchant, Christopher Dare. The quest sought to see whether she believed that the bread and the wine of the Mass did not become the true body and blood of Christ (a heresy called sacramentarianism), as the rst article of the Act of Six Articles (1539) asserted. The Lord Mayor and Bishop Bonners chancellor questioned Askew further. When they failed to get her to admit to sacramentarianism, she was sent to the Counter prison and denied bail. She was in prison for twelve days, during which a priest questioned her and requested she make her confession to him, before her cousin Christopher Brittayn, a lawyer, got her an audience with Bishop Bonner, who as bishop of London was also Askews judge. Bonner and his archdeacon

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encouraged Askew to abjure her heresy by signing a recantation. Askew was sent back to prison for several more days, but upon the lobbying of her cousin and several other inuential friends, Bonner released her. In June she was called to a new trial on the same charge of violating the Act of Six Articles, but since no witnesses spoke against her, she was again released.146 What this quest and its subsequent interrogations were prosecutorially speaking is a complex question, but there are several things they clearly were not. They were not secret trials in which witnesses were immaterial and the defendant had little defense against her judge. Nor were they lay criminal proceedings, in which Askew was accused by a private individual. The Bonner quest fell somewhere in the middle, and its prosecutorial method was tempered by his intent, not to sentence a heretic, but to minister help unto Askews heretical wound.147 True, this was the goal of all the heresy trials in the previous chapters, but Askew was exceptional in her resistance to her bishops help; indeed, she was far more combative than any of the defendants burned at the Kent trials in 1511-12. Hickerson convincingly argues Bonner could easily have pushed his prosecutorial discretion and sentenced her to death for defying the rst article of the Act of Six Articles by refusing to sign his recantation, but the desired outcome for ecclesiastical authorities examining heretics was reconversion rather than martyr marking.148 Instead, Bonner reects a very typical attitude found in lay prosecution the discretionary application of mercy to otherwise harsh statutes, in this case, allowing Askew to modify her recantation and thereby walk the ne line between preserving her life and avoiding apostasy.149 There are some general political reasons why Bonner might have felt pressure to show Askew mercy. The highly public 1541 heresy trial of 17-year-old Richard Mekins had recently inamed antagonism towards the Act of Six Articles; Mekins death produced a universal outcry against the harsh legislation.150 Like Mekins youth, Askews gender (as well as her youthshe was 25 at the time of her trial) would have made her an easy

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target for Protestant martyrologists looking for a banner around which to gather. Yet Bonner and his aides also made some specic legal decisions that reected his attempts to resist royal encroachments on the prosecution of heresy. The rst of these decisions came very near the beginning of the rst Examination, at the end of the quest. Having answered the last question, she abruptly said Then they had me from thence, unto my lord Mayor. And he examined me, as they had before, and I answered him directly in all things, as I answered the quest afore.151 She failed to mention whether she was indicted by the quest, just that it was over and that she had moved on to another phase of questioning. Askew made her legal literacy known throughout the Examinations, so it seemed unlikely that the omission was due to ignorance of the quests importance.152 By now, her combativeness was obvious: she would have had no qualms speaking out against an unfavorable verdict. Instead, she seemed content to let the irregular and extra-legal questioning speak for itself, setting up evidence for the more direct charges of illegality she made later. Also worthy of note is the identity of the inquisitors: the Lord Mayor and the bishops chancellor. Since Contra Lollardos passage in 1401 (or, to be more technically correct, since it was repealed and replaced, 25 Henry VIII c.15), mayors were numbered among the royal authorities charged with arresting known heretics. The bishops chancellor, as his representative in the court, also had a clear reason to be involved in Askews questioning. What was noteworthy is the combination of royal and spiritual authorities in the same inquisition.153 In the questioning, the Lord Mayor seeked to establish Askews guilt by asking her the classic Medieval theological question, whether a mouse eating the host, received God or no?154 When Askew replied with silence (perhaps demonstrating her knowledge that because the quest was over, she could not be found guilty by standing mute?), the bishops chancellor rebuked her for her previous invocations of scripture, which went against Pauline teaching.155 In this inquisitorial dynamic, the royal and spiritual

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representatives mirror their roles under Contra Lollardosthe mayor established the existence of heresy, and the bishops chancellor made specic theological accusations not related directly to the crime but to the defendants general spiritual state. At the close of this inquisition, Askew asked whether she could provide bail instead of being conned to prison; the Lord Mayor responded he would take none.156 This was a reference to the powers given the ecclesiastical courts under canon law, codied again in Contra Lollardosthe right to imprison without bail.157 When she does gain an audience with Bonner, he requests that there should be at that examination, such learned men as I [Askew] was affectioned toa grant of counsel.158 J.A. Guy and H.A. Kelly disagree on the right of counsel in heresy trials, Guy saying the accused were denied advice or legal representation and Kelly maintaining that the law required that counsel be offered, a benet not offered under common law.159 This seems to be a case of the law de jure and de facto differing.160 Nevertheless, Bonner adheres strictly to the canon law so uncommonly followed, providing Askew with legal counsel, who would serve also to witness that Askew was handled with no rigor.161 Lastly, Bonner showed remarkable restraint when it came to Askews abjuration. Up to that point, Askew had been able to dance around the question of her sacramentarian heresy, managing with silent responses and references to scripture. Eventually, Bonner tried to force her to make a direct answer by bringing forth a document spelling out the orthodox belief of the Eucharist, and required Askew to sign it. The document would not have been an admission of having held the sacramentarian heresy (if it had been, Askew would have had to have been burnt without recourse to abjuration by the Act of Six Articles). Askew only signed after altering the document, writing I Anne Askew do believe all manner things contained in the faith of the Catholic [universal] church.162 In doing so, Askew indicated her unwillingness to recant sincerelyas in all her other responses that she believed the Six Articles as far as scripture allowed, Askew hid behind a statement referencing Reform beliefs. Askews refusal of the very reasonable offer of

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recantation threw the bishop into a fury, he returned Askew to prison.163 Despite all this, he released her several days later. Bonners legal decisions to provide bail, provide counsel, and offer a penance-free abjuration defy the increasingly negative stereotype of the crime of heresy. He may have intended his uncommon exibility toward this Protestant heretic as a kind of rehabilitation of the ex ofcio heresy trial before 25 Henry VIII c.15.164 More importantly, his unusual exercise of mercy demonstrated his authority in the jurisdiction of heresy: he took the decision out of the hands of both his chancellor and the Lord Mayor. Certainly, Bonner displayed a willingness to use powers that the Supplication Against the Ordinaries decried as tyrannicalignoring the quest, incarceration without bailbut he also attempted to reestablish the point of the heresy trial: to reeducate and reconvert. In Bonners prosecutorial jurisprudence, at least in Askews case, the death of an accused heretic was more a failure of the Church than a success of the courts.
The Privy Councils Prosecution

A year after no witnesses appeared in Askews second trial, the Privy Council summoned her and her husband Thomas Kyme on charges of Askew preaching doctrine of a naughty opinion.165 Askew was now in a completely different legal environment from her previous two trials. When it acted as a court, the Privy Council most often heard cases pertaining to treason, public order, or misdemeanours of a kind which were currently troubling to the government.166 The Council examined Askew for two days, with Bishop Gardiner of Winchester (a leader in the Councils conservative faction) taking the lead and asking most of the questions.167 Refusing to admit to her sacramentarian beliefs, the Council sent her to Newgate prison, where she contracted a painful illness For in all my life afore, was I never in such painand decided to admit to her heretical beliefs.168 Stating this before the Council, they convicted her of heresy and sentenced her to death. Before burning her, however, the Council ordered Askew to reveal her suspected accomplices.169 Refusing to implicate these women close to the Protestant-friendly Queen

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(considered by several scholars to be the true target of the Councils investigation), Lord Chancellor Wriothesley and Sir Richard Rich, both members of the Privy Council, racked Askew personally.170 She remained silent, and was executed on 16 July 1546. The decision to rack Askew was undoubtedly the most dramatic example of the Councils willingness to increase the courts power to investigate heresy. To the English mind, limited use of torture had long been one of the things that separated the fair English courts from their tyrannical European counterparts. Arnold notes the appropriateness to English identity that papal inquisitors complained, amongst other things, about the lack of decent torturers.171 Askews torture in the Tower of London, the rst time a woman had been tortured there, could hardly have been designed better to instigate public outrage. It was also, according to Askews editors and supporters, illegalthe Council had already convicted Askew of heresy, and torture with the intent to reveal a conspiracy was more commonly in the purview of treason.172 Despite these political risks, Lord Chancellor Wriothesley and Sir Richard Rich racked Askew personally, using the most painful powers at the governments disposal to force Askew to meet their political needs. The Councils use of any and all powers at its disposal undid whatever Bonners investigation of Askew might have done to move heresy prosecution back to its pre-25 Henry VIII c. 15 state. Where Bonners trial tried a threat to religion, the Councils tried a threat to the state; where Bonner proved the leniency possible under canon law, the Council proved the harshness possible with added royal powers; where an ecclesiastical court could neither torture nor kill, the Privy Council did both. In doing so, the Council brought the prosecution of heresy further into the royal jurisdiction than it is likely the framers of the Supplication Against the Ordinaries ever had in mind.

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The New Heresy

The effects of the Anne Askew case were notable almost immediately. Not even a year after her execution, Bishop Gardiner complained that copies of Bales Examinations were commonplace.173 However, Gardiners complaints themselves are not nearly as important as the location from which he would soon be making themKing Edward imprisoned him for resisting the religious changes sweeping through England.174 The conservative factions attempt to smear Catherine Parr had failed, and Edward VIs Lord Protector was the Queen Catherines brother-in-law, duke of Somerset, who was soon busy promoting a Protestant religious policy. By the 1560s, Foxes incredibly popular
Acts and Monuments immortalized Askews story, casting Gardiners and the Councils

prosecutorial victory over Askew in so heinous a light that future monarchs (barring the Catholic Mary) celebrated their accession with the repeal of anti-heresy laws, though as their reigns progressed, they tended to replace them with new ones. Yet, the prosecution had had its victory over Askewthey convicted her of heresy and burned her at the stake. The conservative Privy Councilors had won in that sense, but they had not achieved their goal. This prosecutorial victory without the wider political victory demonstrated that by the end of Henry VIIIs reign, the crime of heresy had changed from the Lollardy trials of the early 15th century. Heresy was no longer a theological crime linked to civil disobedience by peasant revolts and heterodox traitors like John Oldcastle. The political factions who now used it as a political tool saw changing religious doctrines as concerns related to the monarchs sovereignty, as indeed they had become. Even though the Councils political maneuver was ultimately unsuccessful, the effort they expended for it and the hopes they pinned on it show that they saw heresy as a crime linked to the highest political concerns of the day. As a heretic, Anne Askew was fairly unremarkable but for a fairly tangential relationship with the queen. The extraordinary nature of her trials, then, did not have as much to do with Askew as it had to do with the new role heresy was playing, and would continue to play, in the Reformation.

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CONCLUSION

In his through analysis of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Roman Canon Law in

Reformation England, R.H. Helmholz argues that by the time the ofcial reformation

arrived, a jurisdictional reformation in the Church courts had already happened.175 This was certainly true of the ecclesiastical courts civil jurisdiction, which was largely untouched by the Reform Parliaments legislation and even defended by some of Henry VIIIs royal proclamations.176 The specic crime of heresy, however, had a much different role to play in the jurisdictional battle between royal and ecclesiastical courts. Heresys close relationship with Henrys Supreme Headship, and the new kind of kingship that authority implied, meant that by the start of the ofcial Reformation, a revolution of ecclesiastical courts criminal jurisdiction was really only getting off the ground. Before 1380, England was a textbook example of how the papacy thought a king and the Church should work together when it came to prosecuting heretics. Admittedly, this was likely due less to a spirit of respect and camaraderie between the two institutions than the dearth of heretics in England before this time. Yet even when Lollardy began to spread across England in the 1380s, royal legal innovations did not infringe on the crime of heresy. For the whole of the 15th century, the royal courts tended (from an ecclesiastical point of view) to stay in their place when it came to heresy, though the rest of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction was in a state of ux. Even during this time of jurisdictional stability for heresy, however, the prosecution of the crime began to take on a political character. Heresy had always been the Churchs method of dening orthodoxy; no doctrine had ever been declared dogma unless it had been opposed. It was not until the late 15th century and early 16th century that this ability became relevant to English politics, culminating in Henry VIIIs divorce and separation from Rome: the structure and authority of the Church was a matter of orthodoxy, and in order to preserve or change the Churchs authority, one had to be able to dene orthodoxy. Heresy was attractive because it had legal brute strength, like inquisitions and dramatic executions. But more than that, the crime of heresy was the path to what historians have already dened

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as the central issue of the Henrician Reformation, the authority of the pope versus the king. It was this political quality that made controlling heresy central to controlling the beginning of the English Reformation. During the rst stages of the Reformation, the crime of heresy was the weapon of choice for both ecclesiastical and royal ofcials. Bishops across England intensied their anti-heresy campaigns as a clear reaction to the heresies with which their king was irting. Sir Thomas More stretched his statutory authority to support the prosecution of heresy to its limit, even transforming the Court of Star Chamber into a forum that could try heretics (though only lightly punish them) in an effort to move the Crown back into supporting the 15th century ecclesiastical jurisdiction. But Henry VIII made More his unwitting ally in his attempt to bring the English church under the monarchys control by forcing clerical concessions of authority early on in the Reformation. Without a rm grip on the prosecution of heresy, the Church lacked the ability to ght back against royal tools like praemunire, and made the concessions that allowed Henry to set up an Anglican church. This jurisdictional revolution, along with other factors, allowed the Henrician Reformation to evolve from a royal problem to an institutional reality. It was not enough for the royal government to legislate institutional changes, or even to legislate doctrine, if it did not have a political tool that could enforce those changes. Tudors after Henry VIII also found this to be the case. In the rst year of his reign, Edward VI repealed his fathers heresy legislation, but in that same year, he used the Supreme Headship his father had created with those laws to institute widespread Calvinist reform. Mary I had fewer qualms about prosecuting heretics (Protestant, this time, as Mary tried to undo her predecessors Reformation), and though with the help of Foxes Acts and Monuments history remembers her as Bloody Mary who foolishly tried to recreate a Catholic England, England was at least nominally Catholic under her reign. Even Elizabeth, who did not wish to make windows into mens souls, did not hesitate to pursue Catholics to the

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stake. Indeed, it is under her reign that heresys transformation into a royal crime with the passage of a law that equated practicing Catholicism with treason. Even though the actual burning of heretics declined sharply in the 17th century, this equation of heresy and treason lasted well into the reign of the Stuarts. Even when the legal category of heresy waned in importance as the king and Parliament dissolved, reestablished, and re-dissolved the ecclesiastical court system, the association of religious dissenters with treason became a powerful cultural phenomenon in early modern England. The barring of dissenters and Catholics from government service shows how the politicization of heresy was not something that stopped once England was established as a Protestant nation. Instead, this political character of the crime became subsumed within Englands society and culture.

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ENDNOTES
1 When

I use the term heresy throughout this article, I will be referring to its legal sense. Any reference to heresy as a theology or ecclesiology will be referred to as heretical beliefs.
Tudor and Early Stuart England (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2000), 95120.

2 J. A. Guy, Thomas 3A

More and Christopher St German: The Battle of the Books, in Politics, Law and Counsel in

notable exception is the Act in Restraint of Appeals. See below, chapter 3. Beilin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

4 Anne Askew, The Examinations of Anne Askew, ed. Elaine V 5 Success

here is measured in terms of sincere conversion to a Protestant theology: see G. R. Elton, Policy and Police; the Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge [Eng.]: University Press, 1972); J. J Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, England ; New York, NY: Blackwell, 1984); Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society Under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). (Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 25.

6 E.H. Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History 7

Theresa D. Kemp, Translating (Anne) Askew: The Textual Remains of a Sixteenth-Century Heretic and Saint, Renaissance Quarterly 52, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 10246. P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1 (London; Washington, D.C.: Sheed & Ward Lim.; Georgetown University Press, 1990), 244.). Whipping, however, was occasionally permitted, as was torture in very rare instances: R. H Helmholz, The Oxford History of the Laws of England: The Canon Law and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction from 597 to the 1640s, vol. 1 (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 61719. 5 Richard II stat. 2 c. 5 (1382), 2 Henry IV c. 15 (1401). were, of course, some exceptions: Helmholz, Roman Canon Law in Reformation England, chap. 2 and passim. Clayton J Drees, Authority & Dissent in the English Church: The Prosecution of Heresy and Religious NonConformity in the Diocese of Winchester, 1380-1547, Texts and Studies in Religion; V. 73 (Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 1997), 1119. H. Arnold, Lollard Trials and Inquisitorial Discourse, in Fourteenth Century England, ed. Christopher Given-Wilson (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2002), 8194.

8 Canon law forbade ecclesiastical courts from maiming or executing the guilty (X 3.5.5 and 3.50.9, Norman

10 There 11

12 John 13 For

more on the Roman Inquisition, see J.A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law, The Medieval World (London; New York: Longman, 1995), 926; A.K. McHardy, De Heretico Comburendo, 1401, in Lollardy and the Gentry in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Margaret Aston and Colin Richmond (Stroud [England]: Sutton Pub, 1997), 11213. For a complete account of Lollardys spread, see Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wyclifte Texts and Lollard History (Oxford [Oxfordshire] : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1988). courts and common law lawyers pursued these cases because they were lucrative: see S. Lander, Church Courts and the Reformation in the Diocese of Chichester, 1500-58, in Continuity and Change: Personnel and Administration of the Church of England, 1500-1642, ed. Rosemary ODay and Felicity Heal (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1976), 21538.

14

15 Royal

16

The question of ecclesiastical jurisdiction before and throughout the Reformation is dealt with extensively in Helmholz, Roman Canon Law in Reformation England, passim, chs. 1 and 3 especially. For a complete account of the evolution of ecclesiastical jurisdiction to this point, see Robert E Rodes, Ecclesiastical Administration in Medieval England (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976); Helmholz, The Oxford History of the Laws of England, 1: ch. 12. Bellomo outlines comprehensively the ecclesiastical jurisdiction set out in the Liber Extra as it conicted with the Roman law in Manlio Bellomo, The Common Legal Past of Europe: 1000-1800, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 7477.

17

93

18 Compurgation

was left to the discretion of the ecclesiastical judges. Some were so lenient as to require only the defendant swearing to her own good character: R. H Helmholz, Crime, Compurgation and the Courts of the Medieval Church, in Canon Law and the Law of England (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), 119144.

19 The

ius commune should not be confused with the English common law, which was a lay system of law based on precedent rather than written statute. See the glossary for more detail, as well as Bellomo, The Common Legal Past of Europe, the preface and ch. 3 especially.

20 The

question of whether canon law was followed to the letter (unless the Crown intervened) or whether it was generally ignored (unless the Pope intervened) has been a major debate, commonly known as the StubbsMaitland debate. For the resolution to these questions, see Helmholz, Roman Canon Law in Reformation England, 420. Helmholz argues that while canon law was generally followed, some specic instances of English custom prevailed against a technical reading of the Corpus Iuris Canonici. Tanner, Decrees, 1:233: Moneantur autem et inducantur et si necesse fuerit per censuram ecclesiasticam compellantur saeculares potestates, quibuscumque fungantur ofciis, ut sicut reputari cupiunt et haberi deles, ita pro defensione dei praestent publice iuramentum, quod de terris suae iurisdictioni subiectis universos haereticos ab ecclesia denotatos bona de pro viribus exterminare studebunt... (see note 22), 234: [his disobedience] signicetur hoc summon pontici, ut extunc ipse vassallos ab eius delitate denunciet absolutos et terram exponat catholicis occupandam.

21

22 Ibid., 233

23 Ibid., 234. 24 Ibid., Helmholz, The Oxford History of the Laws of England, 1:619622.

The requirement that excommunicated persons be avoided personally and economically had many exceptions; R. H Helmholz, Excommunication as a Legal Sanction: The Attitudes of the Medieval Canonists, in Canon Law and the Law of England (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), 111112.

25

Tanner, Decrees, 1:234.; receptores, defensores, et fautores Inquisition was an ofce of the Roman Curia which investigated claims of heresy across Christendom. The procedure of inquisition was an ex ofcio power of ecclesiastical courts to prosecute suspected heretics on the basis of public fame, rather than the accusation or complaint of an individual. It was established on the episcopal level near the end of the twelfth century and at the papal level by the 1230s. For historiographical confusion between the two terms, see H.A. Kelly, Inquisition and the Prosecution of Heresy: Misconceptions and Abuses, Church History 58, no. 4 (December 1989): 439443. Tanner, Decrees, 1:383: Ad nostrum, qui desideranter in votis gerimus, ut des catholica nostris prosperetur temporibus et pravitas haeretica de nibus delium exstirpetur... Ibid., 380-82. vulnerable were probate (last wills and testaments), defamation, and contractual law, which often contained nominally religious oaths (often the phrase by my faith was used) but dealt with otherwise nonreligious matters; see Helmholz, Roman Canon Law in Reformation England, 533, passim.; Lander, Church Courts and the Reformation in the Diocese of Chichester, 1500-58.

26 The

27

28

29 Especially

30 For 31

the establishment of the Corpus Iuris Canonici as an ofcial text, see J.A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law, The Medieval World (London; New York: Longman, 1995), 5361. n. 21. 5 Richard II stat. 2 c. 5 (1382), 2 Henry IV c. 15 (1401), 2 Henry V c. 7 (1414) Helmholz, Canon Law and the English Common Law, in Canon Law and the Law of England (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), 1.

32 R. H 33 For

what follows, see R. H Helmholz, The Writ of Prohibition to Court Christian Before 1500, in Canon Law and the Law of England (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), 5976; R. H Helmholz, Writs of Prohibition and Ecclesiastical Sanctions in the English Courts Christian, in Canon Law and the Law of England (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), 7799.

94

94

34 Writs

of prohibition were initially earned by a legal wager, where if the defendant found eleven subjects to swear to his right to the writ, it was granted. Writs of prohibition were then awarded by jury, which could easily nd in favor of either the defendant or the ecclesiastical court. Finally, applications for writs of prohibition were issued by Chancery, which would look only at the libel (accusation) in order to determine whether to grant a writ of prohibition or even to grant a writ of consultation, which negated a writ of prohibition. Most applications for writs of consultation were successful. 27 Edw. III st. 1, c.1 (1353)

35

36 Hunnes

death made the case well-known, to the point that it became a rallying point for those who opposed the reach of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. For a more detailed account of Hunnes trial, see R.J. Schoeck, Common Law and Canon Law in the Writings of Thomas More: The Affair of Richard Hunne, in Proceedings of the Third International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Strasbourg, 3-6 September 1968, ed. Stephan Kuttner, Monumenta Iuris Canonici C, sub. 4 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1971), 2379. The clergy were later pardoned, though they paid a large ne. The clergy also had to agree to certain articles, including Henry VIIIs supreme headship, though only as far as the law of Christ allows. See J. A. Guy, The Public Career of Sir Thomas More (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980), 148151.

37

38

Helmholz, Roman Canon Law in Reformation England, 31. deprived an individual of the sacramental graces of the Church, and took him out of the Christian community. Interdict could be applied to an entire geographic area, and suspended all ecclesiastical functions while it lasted. To die under a state of excommunication or interdict was to risk eternal damnation.

39 Excommunication

40 Guy, The Public Career of Sir Thomas More, 136. 41 Guy 42

notes in particular the Collectanea satis copiosa, in Guy, The Public Career of Sir Thomas More, 131-36.

Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 370 ff; 35 Henry VIII c.5. Anne Hickerson sums up the scholarship on the unpopularity of the Six Articles Act well in M.L. Hickerson, Negotiating Heresy in Tudor England: Anne Askew and the Bishop of London, Journal of British Studies 46, no. 4 (October 1, 2007): 793.: As Susan Brigden, Richard Rex, and others have argued, in a context in which religious division seemed less shocking than it had only a decade before, London juries became increasingly unwilling during the 1540s to cooperate with what many thought draconian, unnecessary, and even arbitrary religious policy. F. Davis, Heresy and Reformation in the South-East of England, 1520-1559 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1983), 1617.

43 John 44 For 45

royal criminal procedure in this time period, see J.H. Baker, The Oxford History of the Laws of England: 1483-1558, vol. 6 (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), sec. IV and VI. 25 Henry VIII c. 15 (1534) say appeared to retreat because in fact, the royal courts had had a procedure roughly equivalent to inquisition called a writ De gestu et fama, which allowed the royal courts to arrest a person on the suspicion of a felony, which after 1539, heresy was. The comparison was originally drawn by Sir Thomas More while Lord Chancellor (before the discussed legislation), H.A. Kelly, Thomas More on Inquisitorial Due Process, The English Historical Review 123, no. 503 (August 2008): 878. To contemporaries of the Act of Six Articles like Christopher St. German, however, the writ De gestu et fama was nothing nearly as serious as the hated ecclesiastical inquisition.

46 I

47 Helmholz, The Oxford History of the Laws of England, vol. 1, chap. 1. 48 See

above and Margaret Aston, Corpus Christi and Corpus Regni: Heresy and the Peasants Revolt, Past & Present 143 (May 1994): 347. Lollards became identied with revolt against royal power in general in the 15th century; see Hudson, The Premature Reformation, 61. 5 Richard II stat. 2 c. 5 (1382), 2 Henry IV c. 15 (1401), 2 Henry V c. 7 (1414) Ian Forrest, The Detection of Heresy in Late Medieval England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), chap. 3.

49 50

95

51 David Wilkins, ed., Concilia Magnae Britanniae Et Hiberniae (London, 1737), 314319. 52 Maureen 53

Historical Research 75, no. 189 (2002): 273295, 2 Henry V c. 7 (1414).

Jurkowski, The Arrest of William Thorpe in Shrewsbury and the anti-Lollard Statute of 1406,

Ecclesiastical courts would accept evidence from quests in some extraordinary cases, such as the death of a witness. Some of the stricter standards of canon law included the necessity of having two witnesses to conrm a piece of evidence, as well as poena talionis, the legal principle by which the accuser, if unsuccessful in his cause, bore the punishment the defendant would have faced: Kelly, Thomas More on Inquisitorial Due Process. Haigh, English Reformations, 8. Tanner, Heresy Trials in Norwich, 9. The preferred Lollard meeting place was the home: Norman P. Tanner, ed., Kent Heresy Proceedings, 1511-12, Kent Records 26 (Kent: Kent Archaeological Society, 1997), xix. one example, see William Colyns description of mistress Le Straunge (most likely Emma Oldhall, an older member of the community) Tanner, Heresy Trials in Norwich, 90.

54 55 56

57 For

58 Ibid., 2930. 59 R.N. Swanson, Literacy, Heresy, History

and Orthodoxy: Perspectives and Permutations for the Later Middle Ages, in Heresy and Literacy, 1000-1530, ed. Peter Biller and Anne Hudson (Cambridge [England] ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), passim, esp. 288. None of the Norwich Lollards were able to sign their own names, even John Skylan, whose abjuration had some unique articles strongly evocative of some of Wyclifs writings: Tanner, Heresy Trials in Norwich, 144151. Skylar mentions, for instance, that very pope is that person that is most holy in earth, a Wyclifte attack on the institution of the papacy that was unique to his abjuration. These penances were common; for examples, see Tanner, Heresy Trials in Norwich, 83, 1978.
Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 46 (1973): 146.

60

61 A

transcription of these lists can be found in the appendix of Anne Hudson, The Examination of Lollards, an vel sacerdos, existens in mortali peccato, ordinat, consecrat, concit vel baptizat.

62 Ibid., 153: Item 63

This goes back to a principle introduced in chapter onea heretic would not be burnt unless he relapsed or refused to be corrected by the bishop. The offense was not incorrect belief, but the refusal to accept instruction. One trial with all these records is that of John Wardon: Tanner, Heresy Trials in Norwich, 32. Ibid., 21719. Tanner has provided tables of the heterodox beliefs confessed in ibid., 11; Tanner, Kent Heresy Proceedings, xxv. Norman P. Tanner, Penances Imposed on Kentish Lollards by Archbishop Warham 1511-12, in Lollardy and the Gentry in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Margaret Aston and Colin Richmond (Stroud [England]: Sutton Pub,

64 65 66 67

1997), 229249.
68 Though 69 The

the records are from the county of Kent, the subjects of the investigations were under the jurisdiction of the diocese of Canterbury. Dioceses did not necessarily follow county lines. role of a bishop in a heresy trial was medicinal. If a heretic had to be killed for the safety of the community, it represented a failure of the church to reconvert the heretic to an orthodox faith. See R.I. Moore, Heresy as Disease, in The Concept of Heresy in the Middle Ages (11th-13th C.): Proceedings of the International Conference Louvain, May 13-16, 1973, ed. W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia Series 1, Studia 4 (Leuven: University Press, 1976), 111. Outhwaite, The Rise and Fall of the English Ecclesiastical Courts, 1500-1860, Cambridge Studies in English Legal History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 9.

70 Tanner, Kent Heresy Proceedings, 67; R. B

96

96

71 Thomson, Later Lollards, 238. 72 73

Tanner, Kent Heresy Proceedings, xviiixix. The last lay Lord Chancellor had lost the position in 1455. The clergys monopoly on the Lord Chancellorship ended with Cardinal Wolsey and the appointment of Sir Thomas More in 1529. This anticlericalism was especially prevalent among Lollards: Thomson, Later Lollards, 24450. See above, pp.15-6 and Schoeck, Common Law and Canon Law, 2379. Schoeck, Common Law and Canon Law, 24041. Ibid., 240. Haigh, English Reformations, 7677. Tanner, Kent Heresy Proceedings, 49 ...Johannem pro heretico relapso et incorrigibili condempnavit [sic]... Ibid., 6 ipsum pro heretico impertinente et incorrigibili pronunciando... [S]he [Grebill] denied it [the testimony] entirely and contradicted the others and no other person pledged on her behalf and witnesses had been deposed falsely against him [Walker]. Ibid., 22, 56 ipsa [Grebill] tamen omnino negavit et contradixit eisdem et nichil [sic] aliud pro se allegavit...; ...huiusmodi testes falso deposuisse contra eum [Walker]...

74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

82 Ibid., 10. 83

Tanner, Penances Imposed on Kentish Lollards by Archbishop Warham 1511-12, 234 and throughout for what follows. The same notaries served several trials: William Potkyn, David Cooper, Thomas Laurence, and John Colman, ibid., xixii. Tanner, Penances Imposed on Kentish Lollards by Archbishop Warham 1511-12, 235; Tanner, Kent Heresy Proceedings, 36. S.E. Lehmberg, The Reformation Parliament 1529-1536 (Cambridge: Cambridge [Eng.] University Press, 1970). For an example of such a request--which is in fact very politely phrased--see Tanner, Kent Heresy Proceedings, 25. For the statutes, see above, chapter one. This was the case in the example of George Taylor, whose examiner Sir Fras. Bryan recommended to Cromwell that Taylor be punished swiftly as a very great example and the safeguard of many. SP 1/90 f.173. Cromwell himself had put agents in the eld listening specically for such slander against the king, as in the case of William Hubberdyne (Hubberdine), SP 2/o f.31. For more on Cromwells position as Vicegerent, see G. W Bernard, The Kings Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church (New Haven ; London: Yale University Press, 2005), 2456. Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation, 34, quoting PRO STAC 2/33/75. G. R. Elton, Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government: Papers and Reviews, 1946-1972, vol. 1 (London; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 129131.

84

85

86 87

88

89 90

91 Guy, The Public Career of Sir Thomas More, 67. 92 Ibid., 16. 93

The French ambassador correctly perceived that the strong anticlerical sentiment for which Wolsey was partly responsible would take the Lord Chancellorship away from the clergy for several decades: Letters and Papers, vol. IV, entry 6019. For Mores legal ability and his familiarity with Chancery and Star Chamber gained under Wolsey, see ibid., chap. 1.

97

94 Ibid., 98103. 95 Ibid., 13. 96 Ibid., 104. 97 As 98

long as the monarch did not wish to create a tax or overturn an existing statute, he or she did not need Parliament to make law, but could instead issue a royal proclamation which held the full force of law.

Guy, The Public Career of Sir Thomas More, 1723 where Guy also notes that Hughes and Larkin have likely misdated Proclamation 122 Enforcing Statutes against Heresy (p. 172 n.164). P.L. Hughes and James Francis Larkin, eds., Tudor Royal Proclamations: 1485-1533, vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 181186; 193197.

99 Guy, The Public Career of Sir Thomas More, 104. 100 Doctrinally, Henry VIII

was orthodox and was personally involved in crafting the Act of VI Articles, which conrmed the orthodoxy of several Catholic doctrines, most notably transubstantiation. 35 Henry VIII c.5 (1543) I am using terms like Henry VIII and the king as shorthand for the monarch and his many councilors and agents. While speaking of Henry is in many ways appropriate because of his unusually thorough involvement in matters of state at this time, I do not wish to imply that royal actions against the ecclesiastical jurisdiction were effected by a single individual. Kelly, Thomas More on Inquisitorial Due Process, 847852. For this and what comes below, see also Kelly, Thomas More on Inquisitorial Due Process. had no degree in canon law, but his writings show familiarity with many canonical texts: R. H Helmholz, Thomas More and the Canon Law, in Medieval Church Law and the Origins of the Western Legal Tradition: A Tribute to Kenneth Pennington, ed. W.P. Mller and M.E. Sommar (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 37588.

101

102 103

104 More

105 Sir Thomas

More, The Complete Works of St. Thomas More: The Debellation of Salem and Bizance, ed. J.A. Guy et al., vol. 10, The Complete Works of Sir Thomas More (New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 1987), 18889.

106 Ibid., 10:19. 107 Ibid., 10:104. 108 Sir Thomas 109

More, The Complete Works of St. Thomas More: The Apology, ed. J.B. Trapp, vol. 9, The Complete Works of Sir Thomas More (New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 1987), 13132.

Monition, as a document of ecclesiastical law, is dened by the Oxford English Dictionary as A formal notice from a bishop, an ecclesiastical court, etc., admonishing a person to refrain or desist from doing something specied, or commanding a person to do something specied. This would have been a reasonably expected outcome of St. Germans accusation-denunciation method of prosecuting heresy. More, Debellation, 10:75. This is indeed how most victims of theft reported thieves to Justices of the Peace and other royal ofcials: Cynthia B Herrup, The Common Peace: Participation and the Criminal Law in Seventeenth-Century England, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), chap. 4. J. J Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 314315. 24 Henry VIII c. 12 (1532), 26 Henry VIII c. 1 (1534). Haigh, English Reformations, 14, 28. Hughes and Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations, 1:133.

110

111

112 113

98

98

114 Hughes

and Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations, 1:181186; 193197. Proclamation 122 (pp. 181-186) is likely misdated as 6 March 1529, since several of the prohibited books mentioned in it were published after that date. Guy, The Public Career of Sir Thomas More, 178. Hughes and Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations, 1:195. Ibid., 1:182. Tanner, Decrees, 1:233. and Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations, 1:195.

115 116 117

118 Hughes 119

C.H. Williams, ed., The Supplication Against the Ordinaries, in English Historical Documents, 1485-1558, English Historical Documents 5 (London; New York: Routledge, 1995), 733. Williams, The Supplication Against the Ordinaries. The debate over the accuracy of these claims is argued today as it was in 1532. More was in large part reacting to the Supplication when he wrote More, Debellation, 10:. One scholar who agrees with Mores assertion that the Supplication was inaccurate and the Anti-Heresy Statute of 1534 in fact added little to the rights of an Englishman accused of heresy is Michael Kelly, The Submission of the Clergy: The Alexander Prize Essay, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 15, Fifth Series (1965): 97119; Kelly, Thomas More on Inquisitorial Due Process. On the other hand, some scholars, while acknowledging that the Supplication and subsequent legislation made no substantive additions to canon law, argue that they did make a difference in practice J. A. Guy, The Legal Context of the Controversy: The Law of Heresy, in The Complete Works of St. Thomas More: The Debellation of Salem and Bizance, by Thomas More, ed. J. A. Guy et al., vol. 10 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), xlviilxvii. See above pp. 20-22. and Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations, 1:2278.

120

121

122 Hughes

123 Ibid., 1:228. 124 125

Ibid., 1:260261, 309, 315. For the continued use of the canon law in Reformation England, see: 25 Henry VIII. c. 19 (1533), 27 Henry VIII c. 15 and 20 (1535-6), 35 Henry VIII c. 16 (1543-4), 3-4 Edward VI c. 11 (1549) and Helmholz, Roman Canon Law in Reformation England, passim. For the failed attempt to rewrite the canon law, see Gerald Bray, The Strange Afterlife of the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum, in English Canon Law: Essays in Honour of Bishop Eric Kemp (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998), 3648. Legum Ecclesiasticarum. ff; Bray, The Strange Afterlife of the Reformatio

126 Helmholz, Roman Canon Law in Reformation England, 36 127 128

Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation, 25. I owe this argument largely to Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation. For what comes below, see also ibid., 32-36, though my State Paper references from Gales online resource do not match up with Professor Shagans. For treason laws in this period, see J.G. Bellamy, The Tudor Law of Treason: An Introduction (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul ; Toronto and Buffalo, 1979), chap. 12. was a hotbed of religious reform. 1/84 f.94. The White Horse pub, Shagan says,

129 Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation, 32; SP 130 131 132 133 134

Letters and Papers, vol. VII, p. 289 (entry 754).

Williams, The Supplication Against the Ordinaries, 733. Askew, The Examinations of Anne Askew, 7, 128. 31 Henry VIII c. 14 (1539) Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England During the Reigns of the Tudors, from A. D. 1485-1559, ed. William Douglas Hamilton (Westminster: Printed for the Camden society, 1875), vols. 1, 15556.

99

135 Askew 136 Her

was asked specically about my lady of Suffolk, my lady of Sussex, my lady of Hertford, my lady Dennye, and my lady Fitzwilliams. Askew, Examinations, 122.

father, Sir William Askew, was high sheriff on Lincolnshire in 1521 and a member of Parliament, her brother Christopher was a gentleman of the kings Privy Chamber, and her brother Edward was cupbearer to Henry VIII. All three had died by the time of Annes heresy proceedings, but reect the general station of Askew and her extended family. For more detail, see Beilin, The Examinations of Anne Askew, pp. xvii-xviii. Sir William Askew was involved in many Protestant activities, coming to the attention of the King in a 1536 when taken captive by a conservative mob for his Reform beliefs. He was also accused by Thomas Cromwell of leniency against a Protestant heretic and severity against a Catholic priest. Beilin, The Examinations of Anne Askew, pp. xviii-xix. Askew, Examinations, xix. Askew, Examinations, 92-3. For Bale, see Elaine V. Beilin, Anne Askews Dialogue with Authority, in Contending Kingdoms: Historical, Psychological, and Feminist Approaches to the Literature of Sixteenth-Century England and France, ed. Marie-Rose Logan and Peter L Rudnytsky (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991), 313322. Diane Watt, Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK ; Rochester, NY: D.S. Brewer, 1997). For a more complex look at Foxes purposes for writing, see David Loades, Introduction: John Foxe and the Editors, in John Foxe and the English Reformation, ed. David Loades, St. Andrews Study in Reformation History (Brookeld, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Co., 1997). Elaine V. Beilin tackles the problem of bias in editions of the Examinations and their historiography up to the present in Elaine V. Beilin, A Woman for All Seasons The Reinvention of Anne Askew, in Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers & Canons in England, France, & Italy, ed. Pamela Joseph Benson and Victoria Kirkham (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005). Looking at martyrologists in general, Brad Gregory argues that their texts are, for the most part, reliable: Brad S Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe, Harvard Historical Studies 134 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999), 1626. Bale does claim to possess Askews original Examinations, a claim afrmed by Thomas S. Freeman and Sarah Elizabeth Wall, Racking the Body, Shaping the Text: The Account of Anne Askew in Foxes Book of Martyrs, Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 1169 ff., but they note the likelihood of a heavy editorial hand. Evidence for Foxes translation from Bales edition, minus his Elucidation, can be found in Thomas Freeman, Texts, Lies, and Microlm: Reading and Misreading Foxes Book of Martyrs, The Sixteenth Century Journal 30, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 34. Beilin, Anne Askews Dialogue with Authority, 313. in Robert Weimann, Bifold Authority in Reformation Discourse: Authorization, Representation, and Early Modern Meaning, in Historical Criticism and the Challenge of Theory, ed. Janet Levarie Smarr (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 171. Kemp, Translating (Anne) Askew. p. 1035. Kimberly Anne Coles, Religion, Reform, and Womens Writing in Early Modern England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 28. Hickerson, Negotiating Heresy in Tudor England. For what follows, see Askew, Examinations, p. xvi. Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England During the Reigns of the Tudors, from A. D. 1485-1559, 1556. Askew, Examinations, 45. For the medicinal understanding of heresy prosecutions, see Moore, Heresy as Disease. Hickerson, Negotiating Heresy in Tudor England. p. 782. For the medicinal role of the Church in general in cases of heresy, see Moore, Heresy as Disease. Herrup, The Common Peace, 131164.; K. J. Kesselring, Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History (Cambridge, U.K. ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

137

138 139 140

141

142

143 Quoted

144

145 146 147 148

149

150

100

100

151 Brigden, London 152

and the Reformation, 3345.

Askew, Examinations, 27. McQuade, Except That They Had Offended the Lawe: Gender and Jurisprudence in The Examinations of Anne Askew, History & Literature 3, no. 2 (1994): 114.

153 Paula 154

It was noted in chapter two that royal ofcials were often present at the interrogation of suspected heretics, as well as at the depositions of witnesses. They were not, however, involved in the actual questioning. Askew, Examinations, 27. The Act of VI Articles granted no right against self-incrimination; standing mute was the same as confessing. However, when the quest ended, so did the courts authority over Askew under the Act of VI ArticlesAskew could now legally stay mute. For greater detail on the relevance of Askews gender and her use of scriptural hermeneutics, see David Lowenstein, Writing and the Persecution of Heretics in Henry VIIIs England: The Examinations of Anne Askew, in Heresy, Literature, and Politics in Early Modern English Culture, ed. David Loewenstein and John Marshall (Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). For the Pauline prohibition specically, see Susannah Monta, The Inheritance of Anne Askew, English Protestant Martyr, Archiv Fr Reformationgeschichte 94 (2003): 1368 and Bales elucidation on Askew, Examinations, 30. Askew, Examinations, 31. Guy, The Legal Context of the Controversy: The Law of Heresy. Askew, Examinations, 38. Legal Context of the Controversy: The Law of Heresy, xlix; Kelly, Inquisition and the Prosecution of Heresy, 445. Kelly does make allowances for the possibility that the rights guaranteed by canon law were not guaranteed in fact because inquisitors were trained theologically and not legally, and came by their ignorance honestly. Kelly, Inquisition and the Prosecution of Heresy, 451.

155 156

157 158 159

160 Guy, The 161

162 Askew, Examinations, 39. 163

Ibid., p. 62. Catholic here refers not to Roman Catholicism, but to a universal churcha reference to Reform Protestantism. Abjuration could take many forms, from simple recantation to more complex penances attached to recantation: Guy, The Legal Context of the Controversy: The Law of Heresy, livlv. Askews option was one of the least complicated and least painful for the defendant. leniency toward a Protestant heretic was truly out of character: his nickname Bloody Bonner would be well-earned under Marian rule. the summons, see quotation in Derek A Wilson, A Tudor Tapestry; Men, Women and Society in Reformation England (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), 207.

164

165 Bonners 166 For

167 Baker, The Oxford History of the Laws of England: 1483-1558, 6:202.

See also 33 Henry VIII c.23, which essentially granted a writ of oyer and terminer to the Privy Council on matters of treason, murder, and other crimes of interest to the state. For all those present at the Privy Council examination, see Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England During the Reigns of the Tudors, from A. D. 1485-1559, 168.

168

169

Askew, Examinations, 102. For the literary signicance of physical illness in relation to spiritual strength, see Monta, The Inheritance of Anne Askew, English Protestant Martyr, 1456. Askew, Examinations, 122. Lowenstein, Writing and the Persecution of Heretics in Henry VIIIs England: The Examinations of Anne Askew, 11. Monta, The Inheritance of Anne Askew, English Protestant Martyr, 1345.

170 171

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172 Arnold, Lollard Trials

and Inquisitorial Discourse p. 88. See also above, Ch. 1, p. 1.

173 McQuade, Except That They

Had Offended the Lawe: Gender and Jurisprudence in The Examinations of Anne Askew; Hickerson, Negotiating Heresy in Tudor England. For treason and torture, see Bellamy, The Tudor Law of Treason, chap. 1. Gardiner, The Letters of Stephen Gardiner, ed. James Arthur Muller (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970), 278. Redworth, In Defence of the Church Catholic: The Life of Stephen Gardiner (Oxford, UK ; Cambridge, MA: B. Blackwell, 1990), chap. 1011.

174 Stephen 175 Glyn

176 Helmholz, Roman Canon Law in Reformation England, 33.

Optogenetics Lights the Way to Restored Vision

JUSTINE LEE
Department of Neuroscience, Health Promotion/Disease Prevention Professor Norah Ashe

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For most people, algae may seem like nothing more than a plant-like organism oating in the sea, but for the millions of people worldwide who suffer from vision loss, these life forms may be the solution to their blindness. Because of their ability to capture light, algal proteins have recently been incorporated into vision therapies and heralded as the future of Ophthalmology research. Blindness currently aficts more than 39 million people worldwide (Visual Impairment), and the increasing prevalence of genetic and age-related retinal diseases has left scientists scrambling for a catholicon. While clinicians often focus on the development of retinal transplants, prosthetics, or solar-chip implants to treat retinal diseases, a new eld called Optogenetics is emerging, a eld which offers a far less invasive solution (Ophthalmologists Implant). In the optogenetic method of restoring vision, algae-derived light sensitive opsin proteins are embedded into the retina of the eye. When light is shined on them, these
opsins react like they would in the wild. They activate, thereby triggering the light

transduction pathway and allowing for light sensitivity. By taking over the function of photoreceptor cells, these opsins are particularly benecial in the treatment of diseases like Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), a relatively common condition in which photoreceptors degenerate over time (Leonard et al. 1). Currently, aficted patients can only rely on vitamin A supplements to slow their ocular degeneration (Berson et al. 761). Unfortunately, these vitamins can neither reverse retinal damage nor prevent future photoreceptor degeneration. In the ght for ocular restoration, they are useless; optogenetics may be the solution. Recent studies of mice have shown optogenetics potential to improve current retinal gene therapies and treat blindness in a fast, safe and effective manner. Because there is no prior restorative treatment for blindness, optogenetics is an especially powerful eld of research with the potential to successfully target genomic mutations and restore vision.

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BACKGROUND: BIRTH OF OPTOGENETICS

Pioneered by Dr. Karl Deisseroth in 2005, optogenetics combines optics and retinal gene therapy in order to inuence cellular activity (Baker 21). Named Nature magazines Method of the Year in 2010, Deisseroths optogenetic technique focuses on the potential applications of Channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2), a light-sensitive molecule derived from algae (Goldman). This technique was rst used to articially induce simple worm and fruit y behavior (Baker 21). After inserting ChR2 into specic cells in worms, Deisseroth discovered that the worms were then coded for light-sensitivity; light pulses could control the activity of the cell, and ultimately of the individual (Baker 20). This same concept was soon applied to the study of blindness. When scientists delivered ChR2 to retinal cells in mice, previously blind mice could subsequently respond to illumination. Though ChR2 is an algal protein, it can mimic the structure and function of its human equivalent,
Rhodopsin. Even when inserted into retinal cells, it retains its light-capturing capabilities.

In order to introduce ChR2 into the retina, researchers used an Adeno-associated virus (AAV) because of its long-term stability and simple malleability. Having been extensively researched, AAV is a nonpathogenic virus known to be both safe and non-toxic with an uncanny ability to infect most human cells and tissues (Alexander and Hauswirth 121). AAV is unique in its ability to successfully deliver ChR2 to the hosts genome without mutating within the body or signicantly altering the hosts DNA over time (Alexander and Hauswirth 126). It can target specic cells, replace and inactivate mutations, and incorporate new coding genes. Because of this, AAV is the preferred viral delivery mechanism in optogenetics and the current mainstay of viral gene therapies (Alexander and Hauswirth 121). Compared to earlier techniques, the optogenetic approach is a vast improvement in terms of precision and safety. Before optogenetics, in the later stages of retinal degeneration, electrodes were inserted into the retina to electrically stimulate neurons (Miller 1554). In this procedure, metal wires indiscriminately operated on thousands of

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cells at once, a dramatic stimulation that not only physically harmed the retina, but could worsen existing retinal conditions as well. Because of its imprecision, the procedure could trigger the ring of nearby inhibitory cells, potentially expediting degeneration (Lagali et al. 6). The procedure was also an extremely invasive one. The insertion of foreign metal objects into the eye came with the risk of infection or retinal detachment, and called for an extended recovery period. Optogenetics, on the other hand, is much less invasive. It utilizes intraocular needles that easily access the retina through an injection on the side of the eye. The AAV treatment is precise, targeting specic cell subpopulations without jeopardizing others nearby; the integration of the viral genome into the hosts DNA means that the effects are immediate and long lasting (Lagali et al. 8). Although the use of a virus in medical treatments may seem questionable, its benets cannot be overlooked. Optogentics benets cannot be ignored.
TECHNIQUE: USING OPTOGENETICS TO TREAT BLINDNESS

In normal vision, light triggers the rhodopsin proteins in retinal photoreceptors, which in turn activate the retinas middle layer known as bipolar cells (Masland 877). This subsequently stimulates the ganglion cells, which conduct the signal to the visual cortex of the brain (Masland 877). With retinal conditions or diseases like Macular Degeneration or RP, inoperative photoreceptors leave the remaining cells in the pathway fully functional but incapable of being activated (Strettoi et al. 869). One link in the chain is broken and patients are left blind. Unfortunately, because photoreceptors detect light and are therefore under constant stimulation, they are especially prone to mutation. RP, the leading cause of incurable blindness, is attributed to over 200 possible mutations in the rhodopsin gene (Mazzoni, Novelli, and Strettoi 14282). Though this gene is a small portion of the mouse genome, it is highly expressed in the retina, with over 60 million
rhodopsin molecules present in the 6.4 million photoreceptor cells (Chadderton et al.

598). Because it is so highly expressed, one genetic mutation is amplied, making the treatment of blindness doubly difcult. It is not just the challenge of capturing light after photoreceptors have died, but also of ensuring that retinal mutations will leave the light

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transduction pathway intact. If they do not, the brain is unable to process visual input. Optogenetics can address both of these issues. First, to restore the light-capturing ability of the eye, scientists rst proposed using ChR2 to articially create light-sensitivity in downstream bipolar or ganglion cells. Since bipolar cells link photoreceptors to the rest of the visual circuit, researchers reasoned that their newfound light-capturing properties would enable them to bypass any defunct photoreceptors (Strettoi et al. 867). One study tested this hypothesis, and revealed that targeting bipolar cells was indeed more effective than targeting ganglion cells due to the structure of the eye (Masland 880). Since bipolar cells transmit signals both vertically to the ganglion cell layer and horizontally to lateral cells (Masland 880), initial signals are amplied and the eye will respond to minute illuminations. When bipolar cells are skipped, however, these lateral transmissions are lost as well. According to Cronin and Bennett, this is a grievous oversight. By not taking advantage of the bipolar cells dualprocessing power, a treatment or procedure that overlooks them will not utilize the retinas full potential (Cronin and Bennett 1192). Second, to ensure that the transduction pathway to the cortex will remain intact despite inoperative photoreceptors, scientists analyzed the projections in diseased animals brains. Results showed not only the retention of ganglion morphology and overall retina structure, but also the continued existence of projections to the cortex throughout the various stages of RP (Mazzoni, Novelli, and Strettoi 14286). In other words, despite prolonged periods of blindness and sensory deprivation, the visual cortex continues to respond to stimuli. The ramications of this revelation were profound. Following this discovery, researchers viewed bipolar cells as stable sites for ChR2 treatments. After administering an AAV-ChR2 linked therapy that bound to bipolar receptors, cortical recordings were taken (Lagali et al. 2). Results from this treatment showed an increased cortical activation from light stimuli and a correlation between the intensity of the light and short spikes in excitatory currents (Lagali et al. 2).

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Interestingly, behavioral performance in visually guided water box tests also improved post-treatment (Pang et al. 4280). Each mouse was placed in a water tank with an escape platform in either illuminated, ambient, or darkened lighting conditions (Pang et al. 4280). How much time it took each mouse to nd the platform was then recorded. Treated mice were substantially faster and more active than their untreated counterparts. When tested under illumination, treated mice reached the platform in seconds while untreated mice swam in circles until they bumped into the platform (Pang et al. 4281). Because of its success in this study and in other similar studies (Lagali et al. 5), AAVChR2 is often described as the rst treatment to successfully target bipolar cells, increase their activity and restore light responsiveness, and have a noticeable effect in visually guided behavior tasks. After such substantial initial successes, scientists decided to push the AAV-ChR2 treatment even further by using it to prevent photoreceptor death from occurring in the rst place. Photoreceptor death in RP occurs through a process known as apoptosis. By inserting an X-linked inhibitor of apoptosis (XIAP) into the AAV-ChR2 virus, scientists blocked cell death and inoculated retinal cells against further degradation (Leonard et al. 1). The pairing of the two greatly augments the treatments benets. XIAP provides long-term protection for a patients remaining photoreceptors while ChR2 enables cells in the bipolar region to capture light. The treatment is two-fold; a mouse with this treatment possesses opsins in both layers of his eye and exhibits a heightened ability to capture light and maintain vision. It is a treatment with benets that far outweigh its AAV-ChR2 predecessor. In morphology examinations, AAV-XIAP-ChR2 treated retinas had multiple layers of photoreceptors that were much thicker than those in their AAVChR2-treated and untreated counterparts (Leonard et al. 3). In other words, unlike its AAV-ChR2 predecessor, the more advanced AAV-XIAP-ChR2 treatment has the potential to protect photoreceptors from death, hence the comparatively thicker layers. Regardless of the initial cause and location of photoreceptor mutation, AAV-XIAP-ChR2 can prevent photoreceptor death.

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SAFETY: IN-VIVO STUDIES

In vivo safety studies in mice have determined that the insertion of AAV-ChR2 into the

eye does not have a detrimental effect on the various tissues of the body. Twelve tissue types, including the eye, brain, heart, liver, spleen, lung, kidney, muscle, jejunum, lymph node, ovary, and skin were all tested and indicated a normal physiology (Doroudchi et al. 9). Within the eye, there were no signs of inammation, atrophied blood vessels, or immune system reactions when the tissue was examined ten weeks post-injection (Doroudchi et al. 1). In a similar clinical study performed on three young adults, antibody levels remained constant before treatment, three months post-treatment, and even one year after therapy (Cideciyan et al. 1000). No hypersensitivity or abnormalities in blood and urine samples were found in either mouse or human trials (Doroudchi et al. 8, Cideciyan et al. 999). Because these results are indicative of a body that retains its normal baseline functioning post-treatment, the US Food and Drug Administration soon approved AAV therapy for use in human patients (Doroudchi et al. 9). Both the scientic evidence and subsequent FDA approval of this therapy highlight how safe the treatment is and herald a future in which AAV therapy will become a viable transnational treatment.
POTENTIAL: OPTOGENETICS AND OTHER DISEASES

Since Deisseroth initially conceived of optogenetics with the hopes of treating neuromuscular and neurological disorders, the application of AAV therapy within these areas has been widely researched. Currently, scientists are looking to optogenetics to treat incurable conditions such as Parkinsons Disease, Schizophrenia, and depression (Miller 1554, Peled 914, Lobo et al.). Currently, therapies for neurological disorders frequently use risky techniques of deep brain stimulation to reactivate neurons. However, applied optogenetic therapies might be realistic alternatives to these imprecise, highrisk, electrical operations. For example, in mouse studies, AAV-ChR2 therapy, followed by ber-optic stimulation into the brain, produced results that were comparable to those of traditional electrode stimulation methods (Miller 1554). However, the benets of optogenetic-based treatment do not stop there. Optogenetics may also offer a solution

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to regaining nerve and limb function in paralyzed patients. Studies utilizing AAV in the Central Nervous System have targeted areas in the peripheral nerves to stimulate muscle recruitment and contraction (Llewellyn et al). Initial tests in worms and mice have been met with much success. Once the treatment is perfected to target the nervous system, such light-activated therapy could transform the lives of paralyzed patients. In a similar vein, researchers are linking AAV to inhibitory genes in order to control involuntary nerve rings in Parkinson patients (Tonnesen et al). By inhibiting patients involuntary muscle movement and even intensely stimulating other neurons, AAV may signicantly help these individuals retain their composure and posture at rest (Deisseroth et al). The possible applications of optogenetics are virtually limitless. An increased number of scientists are looking to optogenetics to enhance current operative techniques as well. For example, within the eld of cardiology, optical pacemakers loom on the technological horizon. In fact, researchers have already successfully controlled cardiac muscle contractions using rhythmic light pulses, and preliminary studies have found that simply altering light pulsation could control the contraction rate and contraction force of heart cells (Knollmann 891). Replacement of electrical pacemakers with optogenetic technology would eliminate many of the side effects of current pacemakers. Patients would nally lead more physically active lives without the fear of wearing down the machinery, breaking metal wires, or having to deal with magnetic interference. Optogenetics is not simply a eld for nding new treatments of blindness. It can offer many innovative and promising therapies beyond the treatment of the eyes.
WHATS NEXT: FUTURE DIRECTIONS OF OPTOGENETICS

Although research has come a long way, exploring and perfecting this form of gene therapy in countless ways, there are still areas of this technology that warrant additional improvements. There are still areas being developed and researched. For example, in their treatment of blindness, researchers are the progression of RP in humans, in hopes

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of determining a window of intervention that will maximize a treatments effectiveness. Some labs are also attempting trials with other natural opsins, such as melanopsin, a mammalian molecule responsible for regulating circadian rhythms (Wang et al. 3). Since
melanopsin is naturally found in the body, this type of protein may be more effective

than ChR2 at capturing light. However, because different opsins are sensitive to different wavelengths of light, future efforts could also utilize a mixture of these proteins to enable color sensitivity and other elements of complex vision. Researchers could also explore ways of manipulating the various subtypes of photoreceptors, which would allow for blind patients to recognize movement and patterned motions. Some scientists are already engaged in extreme research, attempting to isolate opsins from other animals. If these studies are successful, humans may soon be able to see ultraviolet radiation, which would help them distinguish areas of hazardous UV rays, or infrared light. It would be a radical change to humans vision and would prove useful in identifying heated objects dangerous to the touch. While it is clear that optogenetics has the potential to revolutionize medicine, more human studies need to be conducted in vivo to fully understand viral therapies longterm effects. In vivo studies will be the ultimate test of a treatments efcacy since many an auspicious technique has been abandoned after being declared unsafe. Currently, only a few well-funded groups have even been able to apply their therapies to the real-world in clinical environments. Most studies are simply performed ex vivo in removed human retinas or in vivo in mice (Chadderton et al. 593). The translational shift from mouse to human subjects is essential. Without it, it is impossible to understand the long-term safety, appropriate dosages, and side-effects of a treatment in human subjects. Only once this shift takes place will these therapies be closer to being used in real-life. Overall, optogenetics has the potential to revolutionize the treatment of blindness, overhaul current areas of research, and transform medical technology in general. By targeting bipolar cells with AAV-ChR2 to activate the phototransduction cascade,

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this optogenetic gene therapy is the rst treatment to successfully activate the retinal pathway at a downstream site and safely restore vision. Even more promising is AAVXIAP-ChR2s ability to prevent photoreceptor apoptosis, the common cause of the majority of RP and other retinal blindness diseases. This therapy is revolutionary in its broad protection of photoreceptors regardless of initial mutation. However, despite all these capabilities, what truly distinguishes optogenetics from other techniques or supplements is the boundless potential for AAV to infect an assortment of cells within the body. Pairing AAV with the natural ability of ChR2 to respond to light, the resultant AAVChR2 can generate molecular changes in cells, and eventually modify the overall behavior of the individual. The importance of this powerful tool should not be overlooked. With the recent progress in this eld of research, it is clear that optogenetics will be the harbinger of countless novel treatments to come, and will address countless unmet clinical needs. Clinical therapies of this revolutionary magnitude have never been closer, and the future of science and medicine looks bright thanks to optogenetics illuminating light.

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REFERENCES Alexander, J.J, Hauswirth, W.W. Ed. Adeno-Associated Viral Vectors and the Retina. Springer, 2008. 121-128. Baker, M. Light Tools. Nature Methods. 8 (2011): 19-22 Berson EL, Rosner B, Sandberg MA, et al. A randomized trial of vitamin A and vitamin E supplementation for retinitis pigmentosa. Arch. Ophthalmol. 111.6 (1993): 76172. Chadderton, N., Millington-Ward, S., Pal, A., OReilly, M., Tuohy, G., Humphries, M.M., Li, T., Humphries, P., Kenna, P.F., Farrar, G.J. Improved Retinal Function in a Mouse Model of Dominant Retinitis Pigmentosa Following AAV-delivered Gene Therapy. Molecular Therapy. 17.4 (2009): 593-599. Cideciyan, A.V., Hauswirth, W.W., Aleman, T.S., et al. Human RPE65 Gene Therapy for Leber Congenital Amaurosis: Persistence of Early Visual Improvements and Safety at 1 Year. Human Gene Therapy. 20 (2009): 999-1004. Cronin, T., and Bennett, J. Switching on the Lights: The Use of Optogenetics to Advance Retinal Gene Therapy. Molecular Therapy. 19.7 (2011): 1190-1192. Doroudchi, M.M., Greenberg, K.P, Liu, J., Silka, K.A., Boyden, E.S., Lockridge, J.A., Arman, A.C., Janani, R., Boye, S.E., Boye, S.L., Gordon, G.M., Matteo, B.C., Sampath, A.P., Hauswirth, W.W., Horsager, A. Virally-Delivered Channelrhodopsin-2 Safely and Effectively Restores Visual Function in Multiple Models of Blindness. Molecular Therapy. (2010): 1-10. Advance Online Print. Goldman, Bruce. Journals top technique of 2010 goes to optogenetics method pioneered by Stanford scientist. Inside Stanford Medicine. Stanford School of Medicine, 20 Dec 2010. Web. 10 Nov 2011. <http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2010/december/ optogenetics.html>. Knollmann, B. Pacing lightly: optogenetics gets to the heart. Nature Methods 7 (2010): 889-891. Lagali, P.S., Balya, D., Awatramani, G.B., Munch, T.A., Kim, D.S., Busskamp, V., Cepko, C.L., Roska, B. Light-activated channels targeted to ON bipolar cells restore visual function in retinal degeneration. Nature Neuroscience. (2008): 1-8. Advance Online Print. Leonard K.C., Petrin, D., Coupland, S.G., Baker, A.N., Leonard, B.C., et al. XIAP Protection of Photoreceptors in Animal Models of Retinitis Pigmentosa. PloS ONE 2.3 (2007): e314. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000314 Llewellyn, M.E., Thompson, K.R., Deisseroth, K. and Delp, S.L. Orderly recruitment of motor units under optical control in vivo. Nature Medicine (2010). doi: 10.1038/nm.2228 Lobo, M.K., Nestler, E.J., Covington, H.E. Potential Utility of Optogenetics in the Study of Depression. Biological Psychiatry (2012). Advance Online Print.

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Masland, R. The fundamental plan of the retina. Nature Neuroscience. 4.9 (2001): 877-884. Mazzoni, F., Novelli, E., Strettoi, E. Retinal Ganglion Cells Survive and Maintain Normal Dendritic Morphology in a Mouse Model of Inherited Photoreceptor Degeneration. The Journal of Neuroscience. 28.52 (2008): 14282-14292. Miller, G. Rewiring Faulty Circuits in the Brain. Science. 323. 5921 (2009): 1554-1556. doi: 10.1126/science.323.5921.1554 Ophthalmologists Implant Five Patients with Articial Silicon Retina Microchip To Treat Vision Loss from Retinitis Pigmentosa. Rush University Medical Center, Jan 2005. Web. 16 Nov 2011. <http://www.rush.edu/webapps/MEDREL/servlet/NewsRelease?ID=608>. Pang, J.J, Boye, S.L, Kumar, A., et al. AAV-Mediated Gene Therapy for Retinal Degeneration in the rd10 mouse containing a recessive PDEB Mutation Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science. 49.10 (2008): 4278-4283. Peled, A. Optogenetic neuronal control in schizophrenia. Med Hypotheses. 76.6 (2011) 914-921. Strettoi, E, V Pignatelli, C Rossi, et al. Remodeling of second-order neurons in the retina of rd/rd mutant mice. Vision Research. 43. (2003): 867-877. Tnnesen J, Parish CL, Srensen AT, Andersson A, Lundberg C, et al. (2011) Functional Integration of Grafted Neural Stem Cell-Derived Dopaminergic Neurons Monitored by Optogenetics in an In Vitro Parkinson Model. PLoS ONE 6(3): e17560. doi: 10.1371/journal. pone.0017560 Visual impairment and blindness. World Health Orgaqnization, Oct 2011. Web. 9 Nov 2011. <http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs282/en/>. Wang, S., Liu, P., Song, L., Lu, L., Zhang, W., and Wu, Y. Adeno-associated virus (AAV) based gene therapy for eye diseases. Cell Tissue Bank 12. (2011): 105-110. doi: 10.1007/s10561011-9243-7

Players in Your Huswifery, and Huswives in Your Bed: An Examination of the Early Modern English Woman and the Role of Apparel in Contradictory Notions of Ideal Womanhood
MAUREEN LENKER
Department of Film and History Professor Deborah Harkness

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Imagine a world where the notion of private space was a novel concept. Imagine a world where the now-common belief that people behave differently at home than in public was just beginning to take hold. Traditionally, people view a world without privacy as some sort of futuristic nightmarea world dominated by technologybut such a world cannot be restricted to the realm of science ction. It was a very real part of mankinds past. The notion of privacy and private space was relatively new to those living in Early Modern England. The religiosity and domestic architecture of the preceding Medieval period had emphasized a communal approach to life as opposed to the more humanist, individualistic outlook of the Early Modern era. In Medieval England, a persons domestic and communal roles were interchangeable, and the belief that God was always watching meant that a person should be on his or her best behavior at all times. As peoples religiosity waned in the Early Modern era and their homes began to look more like those of today, i.e. separate rooms with distinct functions, the idea of a public versus a private self took hold. The prevalence of Early Modern conduct books, and their systematic delineation between appropriate court and domestic behavior, indicates the eras attempt to make sense of this division. However, the divide between public and private, and acceptable codes of behavior within each space, was still blurred. Because privacy was still such a novel concept, it was difcult to dene exactly when one was in a private space. The centrality of hospitality in Early Modern culture and the importance of entertaining guests at home further complicated the matter. Conduct books, such as The Institucion of a Gentleman (1555), described good hospitality as the dening feature of the honorable Englishman.1 Hospitality required a mediation of public and private space. Just as in court and at public events, one still had the responsibility to demonstrate the virtue and excellence of ones household as displayed particularly through the behavior and appearance of ones wife. However, this was done within the connes of ones own personal and intimate space. Hospitality necessitated the reconciling of public and private.

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For a member of the elite or gentry, the surest way to garner honor was through hospitality where the efcacy of ones entertainment would serve as proof of his maintaining an honorable household. This presented a problem to the Early Modern female who was forced to negotiate a balance between public and private. Though she was still required to maintain her household, oversee servants, present suitable meals, etc., she also needed to impart the same paragon of virtue that she ideally epitomized in public. Given the importance of hospitality in the quest for honor, the Early Modern English woman was presented with a paradox. She had to effectively manage her home with a rm hand while simultaneously entertaining guests and maintaining a public image of ideal womanhood and virtuousness. From portraiture to theater to cinematic representations of the era, the average modern individual has come into contact with an interpretation of the Early Modern female at least once in his or her lifetime. Even without the complicating factor of hospitality, in this myriad of representations, one senses the emergence of a massively contradictory gure. One sees women concurrently displayed as models of silent virtue, chastity, and beauty, and as efcient, vivacious household managers and entertainers. When examining images, conduct books, and literature/drama from the Early Modern period, the impossibility of fullling all of these requirements of the ideal woman becomes strikingly clear. Take for instance these two short excerpts from Early Modern female conduct books. Phillip Stubbes, praising the perfections of his deceased wife in A Christal Glasse
for Christian Women, describes the ideal woman as follows: She obeyeth the

commandment of the Apostle, who biddeth women to be silent, and to learn of their husbands at home. She would suffer no disorder or abuse in her house to be either unreproved, or unreformed. And so gentle was she and courteous . . . And as she excelled in the gift of sobriety, so she surpassed in the virtue of humility.2 Though there is a brief mention of her ability to maintain order in the house, the passage primarily focuses on

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the perfect woman as sober, silent, and honorable. In contrast to this passive image, William Whatelys advice to married men is to allow their wives to fulll their rightful duty to be household managers: In such things [household matters] he should let his wife rule under him, and give her leave to know more than himself, which hath great matters and more nearly concerning the family to exercise his knowledge. And if he see any thing in these and the like matters done disorderly, it were his part to advise and counsel, rather than command.3 These instructionsto allow the female to know more than the male and leave household affairs and child-rearing in her handscontrast sharply with Stubbes notion of subservient perfection. Stubbes ideal applies to a woman in public while Whatelys ideal applies to a woman in private. Clearly, there is a disjunction between the two, but given the frequent blurring of public and private, and the complications arising from the necessity of hospitality, Early Modern women turned to an unlikely source to reconcile these opposing notions of idyllic womanhood. They turned to clothes. Even today, many women value their wardrobes as essential parts of their selfexpression and as their means of navigating the social environment. Though apparel had traditionally been heralded as a crucial component for the Renaissance notion of individualistic self-fashioning, it held an even greater signicance for the Early Modern English female. Clothing, for the latter, was a tool through which she could better navigate a chaotic world and more successfully embody the disjointed conduct ideals that society requested of her. For the Early Modern woman, apparel was vital to the denition of oneself. Apparel tangibly showcased a womans embodiment of the idealized roles and attributes expected or her, and helped her navigate the oftentreacherous boundary between public and private display/conduct. This boundary became especially blurred in light of the complicating need for gracious hospitality, a need which called for mediation between public and private space. Clothing helped Early Modern women reconcile this divide, and served as a tool which

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they could use to fulll societys daunting expectations. Through an examination of the basic construction of Early Modern dress, as well as through Early Modern literature, one can see the essential and complex nature of apparel in the lives of genteel women at this time.
EXPECTATIONS FOR IDEAL EARLY MODERN FEMININITY

Throughout conduct literature of the Early Modern period, there were contradictory forces at play in their descriptions of the ideal woman and her correspondingly ideal conduct. It was a contradiction belying a clear contrast between the public and private female. In a 1635 passage describing rules for Early Modern English housewives, Gervase Markham succinctly describes the vast, conicting array of idealized traits:
Our English housewife must be of chaste thought, stout courage, patient, untired, watchful, diligent, witty, pleasant, constant in friendship, full of good neighborhood, wise in discourse, but not frequent therein, sharp and quick of speech, but not bitter or talkative, secret in her affairs, comfortable in her counsels, and generally skillful in the worthy knowledges which do belong to her vocation.4

The existence of separate behavioral codes for inside and outside the home further complicated matters. In 1561, Sir Thomas Hoby completed and published the rst English translation of Castigliones The Book of the Courtier, laying the groundwork for future analyses of ideal womanhood as a paradoxical paragon. The Third Book of the Courtier addresses the issue of the ideal woman and examines the differences between a public lady of the court and a housewife in the home. Castiglione asserts that the ideal woman should possess tenderness and be soft and milde.5 However, he then begins to complicate things. He rst says that a woman needs to have the understanding to order her husbandes gooddes and her house and children whan she is married, and all those partes that beelonge to a good huswief.6 Then, returning to his initial idealization of

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a womans sweet passivity, Castiglione say[s] that for that liveth in Court, me thinke there beelongeth unto her above all things, a certain sweetnesse in language that may delite, wherby she may gentlie entertain all kinde of men with talke worth the hearynge and honest . . . accompanying with sober and quiet maners and with the honestye that must alwayes be a stay to all her deeds.7 Clearly there is a divide (though not an exclusive one) between the woman who possesses the gumption to run a home and the lady of the court who can successfully entertain, but is also quiet and genteel. Although hospitality occurred in the privacy of the home and was overseen by a woman, husbands expected their wives to exhibit the public qualities of court ladies entertaining their guests. Women had to toe the line between their public and private selves. Further emphasizing this arbitrary divide, Castiglione then describes a womans virtues as being in service to either the public or private sphere: and whether wisdome, noblenesse of courage, staidnesses, and those manye other vertues that you have spoken of, your meaning is should helpe her about the overseeinge onlie of her house, children and houshoulde or els to entertain.8 Additionally, he insists that women should be endowed with many virtues, such as staidnes, noblenes of courage, temperance, strength of the mind . . .not somuch as to entertain as to be virtuous.9 In outward conduct and demeanor, Castiglione calls for feminine traits purely for the sake of virtue rather than for any practical purpose. However, Castiglione makes it clear that a womans virtues should either help her to oversee her household or promote entertaining. He clearly delineates between his version of the ideal public and private Early Modern female. As part of his analysis, Castiglione also calls attention to the role of apparel in helping women mediate this divide between public and private femininity. He instructs, thys [ideal] woman ought to have a judgement to knowe what maner garments set her best out, and be most t for the exercises that she entendeth to undertake at that instant, and with them to arraye herself.10 Castiglione posits the notion of apparel being central

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to the denition of oneself in space and in relation to the expected conduct of the space. His analysis is insightful. The ideal Early Modern woman did not only need to fulll all of societys behavioral expectations, but also had to know what clothing suited each situation; her apparel needed to not only be functional but also needed to enhance the traits that were being required of her at any given time.
DRESSING ELIZABETH VERNON: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE CONSTRUCTION AND FUNCTION OF FEMALE APPAREL

From countless portraits of Elizabeth I to the various costumes in lmic and theatrical productions of Shakespeare, most people have glimpsed at least one example of a woman dressed in Early Modern apparel such as corsets, farthingales, bum rolls, and smocks. However, what can easily be missed by the casual observer is that female apparelboth in terms of the various pieces a genteel ensemble was comprised of and of apparels association with virtuehelped construct Elizabethan womanhood by demarcating a virgin from a harlot and tangibly delineating between the murky notions of private versus public. The immensity of the layers of female clothing, how these layers t together, and the plethora of options available to women depending on whether in a private or public space, are crucial components in the intellectual quest to understand the role of apparel in Early Modern life.11 A careful examination of the following two portraits of Elizabeth Vernon, the Countess of Southampton, begets an in-depth analysis of the different components of private versus public dress. One portrait depicts her in the gown she wore to the coronation of James I (Figure 1) and the other in a state of undress at her toilet (Figure 2). Even at rst glance, these portraits show a marked difference between the female in public versus private space. While Figure 1 depicts Lady Vernon as tightly bound and protected by her clothes in a high-necked ruff, Figure 2 shows her unloosed down to her stays and petticoat, surrounded by wardrobe items that were either recently removed or awaiting a wear. What appears to be the same ermine lined robe/cloak worn so prominently in Figure 1 is

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now gently strewn on the bed behind her in Figure 2. Its primacy in public in contrast to its ready removal in the home clearly indicates its role as an item of public apparel. Additionally, in the formal, public portrait, Elizabeth Vernon seems to have no other purpose than to be viewed. Her arms are wide open. Her gaze is forthright. The portrait and her appearance revolve around presentation and public appraisal. However, in the private portrait of her at her toilet, she is much less objectied. The portrait is meant to be representative of a woman caught in a private moment. Her gaze is less direct and she is not simply standing around waiting to be admired. She is combing her hair with a hand placed across her body in an almost protective manner, suggesting greater vulnerability due to her reduced apparel. Additionally, in the private portrait, the natural shape of Lady Vernons body and arms is far more visible than in the highly constructed, structured dress of the public portrait. In the second portrait, her body is not restricted and modied to match the ideal female form. In private, she can relax. In public, her behavior must match the restrictive nature of her clothes; she must mold herself to t the ideal female form. In other words, the very structure of female apparel suggests that the public sphere required far more guarded, presentable conduct than might be expected in the privacy of ones own home.

FIGURE 1 12

FIGURE 2 13

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In these two images, many of the various pieces of female dress can easily be seen, but not all of them. Though not visible in the portrait, Elizabeth Vernon would have started dressing by donning a shift or smock (Figure 3) a traditionally white, loosetting garment. A smock had sleeves and a neckline that would allow the garment to be invisible beneath ones other apparel. The smocks primary purpose was to protect expensive outer garments/textiles from bodily secretions, while also acting as a nal barrier for the body against dangerous outside forces, such as lust or disease. The smock was an especially important item for distinguishing between public and private space, as it was what the Elizabethan woman traditionally wore to bed.14 A looser gown might be worn over it as a type of robe for morning dress, much like the loose, unbuttoned gown Elizabeth Vernon wears over her corset in the portrait of her at her toilet. Describing various components of dress, The Tudor Tailor stresses the signicance of the smock as a base layer of apparel: Apart from her linen smock, the 16th century woman had nothing between her honour and the rest of the world.15 Considered an undergarment, a smock should not be detectible on sight. A visible smock would have been viewed as a sign of indecency, calling ones modesty and virtue into question. Indeed, while the portrait of Elizabeth Vernon presents her in a private moment, it does not go so far as to show her in her smock, suggesting that even private moments were inuenced by contemporary standards of public decency. The division between public and private space is not an unambiguous one. Even with this most basic article of female apparel, the importance of clothing as a signier of virtue is retained. On top of this smock there would be additional undergarments, known as the corset/ bodice or pair of bodies17 and the farthingale and bum roll (Figure 4). These garments were also traditionally concealed from public view and existed to provide a structure for the looser pieces that would comprise the visible gown. In the portrait at her toilet, Lady Vernon is wearing a pink corset under her dressing gown. She is fully encased within the corset, illustrating how womens apparel fully separated them from the outside world and

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made their bodies their only truly private space. Occasionally, petticoats, which would act as the underskirt with some visibly decorative detail, were attached to bodices resulting in what were known as petticoat bodies.18 This would sometimes take the place of a corset, particularly if one were wearing a looser tting frock while in the home. At the beginning of the Early Modern period, the cone-shaped Spanish farthingale dominated fashion, but through the course of Elizabeth Is reign, the drum-shaped French farthingale began to rise in popularity, requiring the addition of the bum roll on top of a traditional Spanish farthingale. The bum roll caused the skirt to are outward, giving it a wider, more drum-like shape. If preparing to present herself in court or to entertain guests in her home, Lady Vernon would layer the visible garment with its many components over the structural ones visible in the private portrait. First, she would place a kirtle over her smock, bodice, petticoat, and farthingale.20 Frequently, a kirtle was placed directly over the farthingale (Figure 5). A gathered kirtle and petticoat bodies were virtually interchangeable. Both were skirts attached to bodices creating entire undergowns.21

FIGURE 3 16

FIGURE 4 19

FIGURE 5 22

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While a kirtle was still an underskirt, it featured a higher quality front piece known as a forepart, which was chosen to complement the outer gown or frock of the wearer. While the kirtle was often made of coarser linen, the front forepart was made of ner fabric, like taffeta, and generally featured an embroidered design that would match the embroidered sleeves. In her private portrait, Lady Vernon is wearing a kirtle underneath her dressing gown. The bodice is attached seamlessly to the petticoat and the front part of the skirt is clearly a forepart, as it more heavily embroidered and of higher quality than the small portion of skirt back visible in the portrait. Within the privacy of her home, she could have easily fastened a loose frock over this to go about managing various household affairs. In private spaces, women could wear less rigid garments. Like a modern housecoat, loose gowns or frocks could be slipped on and fastened over a womans loose kirtles and smocks as seen in Dorothy Vernons tomb efgy (Figure 6). The high quality of Lady Vernons skirt forepart suggests that this was a bottom layer which could be appropriated as part of an outt for public display. However, the lack of structural components in her skirt or upper body makes this garment currently suitable for only private attire. While her apparel at her toilet represents the looser fashions acceptable in the home, the stiff structure of her upper body and drum-shaped skirt, visible in the formal portrait, show a far more controlled, encased gure. The contrast between these two images reects the contrast between the ideal public and private woman. While in the home, a woman could step outside of societys strict social codes and boundaries because behaviors that were publicly unacceptable were often privately necessary for the effective management of a household. With greater exibility in the private sphere, Lady Vernon could wear looser, owing garments that reected a homes less restrictive lifestyle. However, at public events, the female had to adhere to a far more ordered social role, keeping her thoughts and her body completely to herself. Vernons stiff, heavily structured

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garments are a physical manifestation of this expectation, reminding the observer and the wearer of the necessity for isolation and encasement in the display of public virtue. When dressing to appear in public, Lady Vernon would have had two options: either an open-fronted gown lled with a stomacher, a triangular piece that attened the body and drew ones gure down into a tiny point, (Figure 7, Lady Vernons formal gown) or a tted gown worn over a shirt or a partlet, a decorative garment that tied under the arms to ll in a low-cut neckline and often featured a high-necked collar (Figure 8). Gowns most often fastened at the front using either lacing or hooks and eyes.24 The gown could fasten completely together over a shirt or partlet, or it could be laced to a stomacher. If the gown itself did not feature a high necked collar, the neck could be covered with a ruff, much like the one that Lady Vernon has hanging next to her in her bedroom or the one that she is wearing in her formal portrait. This outer gown though was just one of many visible components. Sleeves were also an integral part of the female wardrobe, ranging in style from looser, owing, hanging pendant sleeves (Figure 9) to tted trunk or verthingale sleeves, which were gathered at the wrist, often in a cuff, and frequently required a wooden or

FIGURE 6 23

FIGURE 7 25

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wire support (Figure 7). Typically, sleeves were either part of the shirt worn under the tted gown or a separate piece that would be laced to the gown at the shoulder. Separate sleeves were commonly embroidered to match the designs on the forepart of the kirtle. Only once she was fully encased in a smock, bodice, farthingale, petticoat and/ or kirtle with a forepart, tted gown over a stomacher or partlet, and sleeves, would Lady Vernon be considered fully dressed (Figure 10).
CLOTHING ONESELF IN VIRTUE

As demonstrated above, Early Modern female apparel required vast amounts of fabric to create a solid barrier between oneself and the physical world. Corsets, or bodies, and farthingales were constructed with ropes, stiff fabrics, and boning to provide a stiff structural base that enclosed the female within a hard, unbreachable shell. Stiff, highly structured clothing, which appears to be almost pasted on in portraits, marked the female body as a private space (akin to the domestic realm) available only to her husband. Susan Vincent describes how garments acted as visual borders between body and clothing [helping] to separate private from public space.29 The female was a private entity that could only exist within a public space when stify encased in clothing. Thus, a woman like Lady Elizabeth Vernon had to balance her role as a public display of family honor and personal virtue with the intrinsic privacy needed to maintain female virtue and modesty - two qualities inherent to domestic responsibility and respectability. In her examination of Renaissance conduct books, Ann Rosalind Jones describes the dilemma facing the Elizabethan woman: Court ladies were expected to be visible, affable, endearing to men of their rank or higher, and, on the other hand, the desirable woman had to be modest in demeanor and emotionally reticent.30 To achieve this balancing act, women turned to clothing. Apparel could make the court lady visible, but it could also visibly reinforce the private aspects of her persona, leaving room for a woman to be affable and vivacious, two qualities not typically in line with the ideal, modest housewife.31

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Authors of the time insisted that women must keep those parts concealed from the eyes, that may not bee touche with the hands.32 The intricacy of Elizabethan apparel ensured that roving eyes or hands could not easily get at a womans most private aspects. In fact, appropriate attire was so rmly associated with the representation of virtue that women were implored to dress appropriately to maintain their honor:
Shield [yourself] with modest and comely garments, such as are warme and wholesome, having every window closed with a strong casement and every loopehole furnish with such strong ordnance, that no unchaste eye may come neere to assayle them, no lascivious tongue wooe a forbidden passage, nor no . . . hand touch reliques so pure and religious.33

Thus, virtue, a private and personal quality, could seemingly be put on public display. Not merely a representative of personal virtue, a woman was also a public display of a households virtue, a visual indication of her husbands status, wealth, and honor. If she appeared improperly dressed, she could bring shame to her entire family and household. Indicative of this notion, Henry Smith, a London preacher, likened the woman to a snail: Phidias when he should paint a woman, painted her sitting under a snails shell,

FIGURE 8 26

FIGURE 9 27

FIGURE 10 28

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signifying that she should go like a snail which carrieth his house upon his back.34 Just as a snail carries his house upon his back, so too, in her clothing, did the Early Modern woman. This idea that a woman carried a representation of her home highlights the relevance of apparel as a public indicator of virtue in a private sphere. Dressing oneself properly could denote effective housewifery, as the good management of clothes might serve as an outward sign of the good management of a household. In the case of hospitality, this would have been particularly useful, as women could have exemplied virtue through their apparel while using more forceful behaviors required to successfully manage a household. From the periods writings on virtue, it is apparent that apparels importance extends beyond its being a visible representation of interior traits. In his treatise The Mirrhor of Modestie, Salter describes the necessity of virtue and chastity in a young womans life, but refers to such traits as something in which one clothes oneself. The title of the essay indicates that the work is a mirror, suggesting that these writings reect the ideal traits expected of a woman in the same way a mirror reects her appearance. Salter describes his work as of muche more worthe then any Christall Mirrhor; for as the one teacheth how to attire the outward bodie, so the other guideth to garnishe the inward mynde, and maketh it meete for virtue.35 Here, already, there is an inherent link between dressing and the metaphoric donning of virtue. He furthers this notion with his praise of chastity, writing how goodly a beautie and gallant ornament chastity is in a young Maiden.36 Much like gloves, a ruff, or jewelry, chastity is described as something a woman can put on to enhance her appearance. It is categorized as a visible entity. Like an article of clothing, its beauty can augment a womans splendor. This notion of clothing oneself in virtue can be found outside the connes of a conduct book. Elizabethans had prayers for seemingly every activity, and Henry Bulls 1596 compilation of prayers includes what one should pray when you apparel your selfe.37 The prayer implores God that as I co~passe this my body with this garment: so thou wouldest cloath me wholly (but specially my soule) with thine owne selfe.38 The speaker

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is asking God to clothe him with his spirit, and therefore, innate goodness, in the same way that a human puts on a garment. Thus, this notion of clothing oneself with virtue and Gods spirit is reinforced through something other than Elizabethan conduct books.
Hic Mulier, a satirical indictment of women who wear lascivious and/or masculine

clothing, emphasizes this concept once more. A Latin pun and deliberate ploy for showing gender issues, the title translates to The Man-Woman, an apt name for a tract chastising women who appear to be men. The pamphlet pleads, Let every FemaleMasculine that by her ill example is guilty of Lust or Imitation; cast off her deformities and cloath herself in the rich garments which the Poet bestowes upon her, listing virtue, chastity, true faith, and obedience as these bestowed garments.39 The pamphlet begs women to cast off their mannish attire, but rather than calling for women to don a dress, implores them to put on metaphorical feminine garments - those traits which comprise virtue. Clearly, there is a distinct connection between apparel and its ability to convey a womans virtue. If she clothes herself in modesty, chastity, and virtue, then her clothing must reect this. From this a notion evolves the idea that loose women can be identied by their loose, owing, unbuttoned, and unkempt appearance; if their garments are loose, then their morals also must be. This is directly reected in Hic Muliers condemnation of women who wear looser, unfastened mens apparel. The pamphlet declares their apparel to be a source of deformityits lack of modesty making them ugly and unappealingand entreats women to return to their modest garb that reinforces virtue, and hence, beauty. It insists that they have:
taken the monstrounesse of [their] deformitie in apparel, exchanging the modest attire of the comely Hood, Cawle, Coyfe, handsone dresse or Kerchiefe, to the cloudy Rufanly broad-brimd Hatte and wanton Feather, the modest upper parts of a concealing straight gown, to the loose, lascivious civill embracement of a French doublet, being all unbuttond to entice . . .and for womens modestie, all mimicke and apish incivilitie.40

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It likens the exchange of a womans apparel for unladylike garments to the exchange of her virtue for unladylike behavior by insisting upon an inherent link between the two. Since proper apparel could mark someone as modest and chaste, it follows that any departure from accepted fashion would be cause for concern. Clothing helped Early Modern women display and recognize traits that their society valued; it allowed virtue to be impressed upon a woman in settings where paradoxically, other behavior might be necessitated. Thus, it is logical that apparel could play a crucial role in the navigation of anxieties arising over the delineation between public and private space.
HOSPITALITY IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

In the Early Modern period, the denition of hospitality experienced a secular shift. Prior to the sixteenth century, hospitality had referred to the practice of opening ones home and food stores to the poor, and it was virtually interchangeable with the concept of charity. However, in the Early Modern period, the denition changed. Hospitality subsequently referred to the entertainment of guests who were above or equal to ones station as a means of reinforcing the social hierarchy and displaying a familys honor. As Felicity Heal explains, the essence of these gestures [of hospitality] lay in their public acknowledgment of the demands of the honour code, in the continual reafrmation of hierarchy, and in the contribution of the host to the maintenance of proper social order . . . the image of the household as microcosm within which true principles of order could be articulated is obviously prominent in the minds of those constructing these elaborate codes.41 Hospitality was crucial because it allowed one to showcase ones home as a microcosm of proper social order. In the same way that the nuclear family reected concerns around other relationships in the Early Modern Great Chain of Being (father to wife and children, as king is to subjects, as God is to humanity), hospitality enabled the genteel to demonstrate their adherence to honor and order within the smaller scale of their home. In conduct books and written stories of the period, the centrality of secular hospitality in Early Modern society is apparent. Gervase Markhams 1635 tract, The English

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Husbandman, lays out a recommended oor plan for English homes with a fteen-item

list which reects the eras focus on planning for potential guests. The oor plan includes the dining parlor for entertainment of strangers and a strangers lodging within the parlor.42 Clearly, guests spaces were integral parts of the gentried Early Modern English home. Entertainment was so deeply rooted in Early Modern life, as an integral method of displaying a households virtuousness and lobbying for its social advancement, that it had even been incorporated into the eras architectural pursuits. Hospitality was extremely important in a households attempts to maneuver within the social hierarchy. As evidenced by the prevalence of conduct books in Early Modern Europe,43 there was a strong belief that adherence to a specic set of behaviors and expectations engendered success in life. Hospitality was an essential component of this process, and the pertinence of entertaining guests was so deeply entrenched that homes were designed specically with this purpose in mind. Though the comparative looseness of her clothing already begins to suggest the greater level of power and control an Early Modern woman might have over her life and her identity within the domestic space, the female role in hospitality especially reinforces this notion of a womans increased power within the home. Yet, women still had to retain their public semblance of virtue, and hospitality provides us with a clearer understanding of how clothing helped Early Modern women negotiate a compromise between the opposing character traits expected of them. In her assessment of Early Modern English hospitality, Felicity Heal comments on womens ability to use hospitality to their advantage: Some measure of self-denition, albeit within the domestic sphere routinely assigned to them, was achieved by women who used good entertainment as a mode of demonstrating their authority. This . . . was perhaps one of the most public ways in which they [women] could acquire honour and maintain reputation.44 By pointing out this divide between public honor/ reputation and private authority, Heal stresses how this demonstration of a womans

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effective authority within a private space reinforced the honor of ones home publicly. The honor of the household was largely siphoned through the inuence of the female. The ideal public Early Modern woman was supposed to display virtue through her appearance and embodiment of the prevailing ideals of silence, chastity, and obedience. Contrastingly, however, a public display of authority within the connes of a private space more signicantly affected the honor and reputation of a household. Thus, through the combination of an appropriate public appearance and the effective management of private spaces, Early Modern English women were able to claim more power for themselves. They could empower themselves while simultaneously donning an outward display of virtue and obedience. Hospitality provided a space where they could reconcile the opposing demands of public and private femininity. Even men writing on female conduct observed this phenomenon of female rule over the domestic realm and womens use of hospitality to increase their power. Henry Percy, the ninth Earl of Northumberland, noted in a 1609 letter to his son:
Women . . . exercised greater control over domestic affairs in England than elsewhere inEurope. The reason was the demands of English hospitality: since a man had to pursue his business elsewhere, his wife perforce had to manage the domestic establishment, entertaining all comers, conducting there guests to there chambers; carefull of there breakfasts, keeping them company at cards, with many more complements of this nature.45

Contemporaries understood that because women had the responsibility to manage the household and entertain any guests at the home, they automatically claimed a kind of authority within the domestic space.
APPAREL IN LITERATURE

Examining how clothing was used in Early Modern English drama and literature leads to an even clearer understanding of how apparel helped women negotiate the seemingly

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irreconcilable differences between their expected private and public behavior, as well as to transgress the boundaries which that apparel helped establish. Taking Shakespeares
Othello, The Taming of the Shrew, and Twelfth Night, as well as Thomas Dekkers The Bachelors Banquet as case studies, it can be seen how clothing and the visible

representations of characters in clothing shaped Early Modern female life. Though works of ction clearly exaggerate real-life situations, they still present valuable insights into how Early Modern people viewed and dealt with societal challenges. APPAREL IN THE BEDROOM Both in its signifying and enabling of moments of intimacy, as well as its role as a subject of discussion in private space, apparel played a crucial part in the allowance and denition of intimacy in the Early Modern period. The bedroom, what was and is the most intimate of all private spaces, was often cited as the one place a housewife could truly speak her mind to her husband. In Shakespeares Othello, Iago complains that his wife, Emilia, talks too much when he comes to bed: I nd it still [her tongue] when I have leave to sleep.46 Thomas Heywood named his 1637 collection of observations on women A Curtaine Lecture, referring to the nagging that might occur behind ones bed curtains once closed for the night (Figure 11).47

FIGURE 11 50

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Since women traditionally slept in a smock or shift, the bedroom was also the space that required the least clothing. From Heywoods description of the curtaine lecture, one can infer a connection between lack of clothing, private space, and the opportunity to speak frankly with your spouse.48 When encased in layers of court nery, the ideal woman remained modest and silent; once undressed down to her smock within the connes of her bedroom, the female could speak more openly about her concerns for the household.49 Thomas Dekker takes this link between apparel, privacy, and intimacy a step further in his tale of The humor of a young wife new married, in which he has a wifes nighttime nagging revolve around apparel itself.51 Dekker describes the wifes decision to broach the topic in bed as a calculated one: observing her opportunitie when she might take her husband at the most advantage, which is commonly in the bed, the gardaine of love, the state of marriage delights, & the life wherin the weaker sexe hath ever the better.52 Dekker acknowledges that the females lack of clothing in this intimate setting actually places her in a position of higher power because of the males vulnerability to lust. Knowing his desire will make him more willing to listen, the wife then goes on to chastise her husband for the shame she felt at appearing in public in the clothes he has provided for her: the meanest of them all [at the party] was not so ill attired as I, and surely I was never so ashamed of my selfe in my life . . . The best woman there came of no better stocke then I.53 Interestingly, in this moment of intimacy, the wife does not merely appeal to her husbands sexual appetite but also to his notion of honor, stating, it was a shame both for you and me, that I had no better apparel.54 Through this statement, Dekker reinforces the notion of the well-dressed woman as representative of her husbands honor. Furthermore, the wife goes on to curse the rst inventors of pride, and excesse in apparel, attempting to make it clear to her husband that she is only requesting these clothes to fulll her duty in upholding the family honor.55 She insists that if it were

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up to her she would be content with clothes that merely cover her body and keep her warm. Though Dekker implies that it is merely a tactic to make her husband feel guilty and pressure him into buying clothes they cannot afford, the wifes complaints highlight the impossibility of the duties of an Early Modern woman. She must be wary of being accused of vanity even if she merely wants to avoid besmirching the family honor with a disheveled outward appearance.
APPAREL, INTIMACY, AND ROMANCE

Through an analysis of the private interactions of Emilia and Desdemona in Othello, Viola (Cesario) and Count Orsino in Twelfth Night, and Bianca and her various schoolmasters in The Taming of the Shrew, a deeper understanding of how apparel might allow for intimate moments, and eventually, at least on a literary level, romance can be found. These private conversations imply that moments of true intimacy and privacy, particularly before marriage, could only be shared by members of the same sex or under the strict guidelines of a professional relationship. Despite Othello focus on issues of intimacy and the concern over breaches of honor, the only truly intimate moments are shared by members of the same sex: Othello and Iago, and Emilia and Desdemona. As a gentlewoman to Desdemona, Emilia advises her throughout the play. In Act IV, Scene iii, Emilia prepares Desdemona for bed, and they discuss exceedingly personal topics, such as death, suicide, and adultery.56 While the play is overrun by these private conversations, including many between Desdemona and Othello, none reach the same level of intimacy and honesty as this particular interaction. What is striking is that it occurs in the bedroom while Emilia is helping Desdemona undress. In this moment, Shakespeare acknowledges the links between a state of undress, privacy, and intimacy. It is only because Emilia is there to give [Desdemona] her nightly wearing that this conversation even occurs.57 For rather obvious reasons in ways previously discussed, clothing plays a large role in the delineation of a space as private and of a moment as intimate.

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Viola (Cesario) and Count Orsinos private interactions in Twelfth Night also bespeak this connection between apparel and intimacy, but in a much different way than the scene between Emilia and Desdemona. Throughout the play, they share many intimate moments, discussing love and various matters of the heart. Count Orsino even proclaims to Viola (Cesario), I have unclasped/ To thee the book even of my secret soul.58 Later on in the play, in a particularly intimate moment, Count Orsino advises Viola (Cesario) about love, and they speak frankly about the nature of love and the differences between mens and womens experiences of it. This scene provides an opportunity for Viola to subtly profess her love for Orsino: My father had a daughter loved a man/ As it might be perhaps, were I a woman,/ I should your lordship.59 It would be an immodest confession if Viola were not disguised as a man. This entire scene would not be possible without Violas masculine disguise because it would have been considered improper for a woman and a man to discuss love so frankly, particularly because it was not considered a vital component in the lives of regular people and marriages, especially among the elite where marriages were often based on rank or status. Through these scenes, Shakespeare indicates the greater likelihood that two members of the same sex would share an intimate conversation than a man and a woman ever could. In Othello, apparel provides for a moment of intimacy because the act of its removal is intimate in itself, but here apparel allows for intimacy because it serves as a disguise. Acknowledging the implicit impossibility of an intimate moment between Orsino and Viola in her true form, this scene illustrates apparels role in the denition of public and private spaces by revealing the different limitations for each gender. Here, Shakespeare speaks to the impossibilities of Early Modern womanhood and circumvents them through cross-dressing. Shakespeare acknowledges the usefulness of apparel and disguise in romance throughout many of his works. In The Taming of the Shrew, Biancas tutors use a disguise to win their own intimate moments with her. One of her suitors, Hortensio, decides that

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he shall offer [himself] disguised in sober robes/ . . . That so I may, by this device at least,/ Have leave and leisure to make love to her [Bianca]/ And unsuspected court her by herself.60 He directly acknowledges that he will use his disguise to gain alone-time with Bianca. Once again, apparel is being used to reach a level of intimacy that would have otherwise been impossible. The issue is complicated further since apparel is not only appropriated in order to delineate between private and public space, but also to gain access to a normally inaccessible private space. These moments highlight and explain why apparel was a source of anxiety for Early Modern peoples. When misused to transgress the boundaries of public and private spaces and a persons role within them, apparel could become a subversive threat rather than a stabilizing source of clarication.
STRIVING FOR PERFECTION OR COMPROMISE?

In all of these works, the authors reveal the ridiculous and impossible expectations to which Early Modern women were held, and imply various consequences to the fulllment of such contrasting social roles. Expected to be chaste, silent, and obedient representation of her husbands virtue on the one hand, and an efcient, vivacious household manager and entertainer on the other, women were continually presented with a paradox which the women themselves often acknowledged. Navigating this dichotomy, Early Modern English women were often more concerned with their apparel when in the company of their female friends than when socializing with their husbands male peers. The resulting anxiety about successfully displaying ideal femininity for other women is satirized in Dekkers The humour of a woman lying in Child-bed.61 Following the birth of her child, the woman in the story chastises her husband for not keeping the house properly stocked to entertain guests and insists that he not allow anyone to visit because of his refusal to buy her a new gown for her Churching.62 Her suggestion that he send word to women she describes as her Gossips63 to cancel their visit prompts him to give in to her demands: Not so will I neither breake custome, nor so much as gainesay their courteous offer, they shall come

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sure, and be entertained in the best manner I may.64 With this statement, the man ascertains the importance of properly entertaining guests, especially female guests, in his home in order to maintain the honor of his household and his wife. The wife also stresses that if she fails to appear in a gown, which she does not want, but which ought both by reason and custome to be obserued,65 and if their house is not properly stocked to entertain guests, it reects more poorly on the head of the household than on her herself. Recounting her embarrassment when their neighbors came to visit and she had nothing in the house to set before them,66 she stresses to her husband that in such situations although the sorrowe bee [hers], the shame will be [his].67 This causes the man to resolve to spend more than he can afford to preserve appearances and sacrice his own apparel to ensure his wife is well-dressed. Thus, asserting her domestic authority and her dedication to maintaining the outward pretense of ideal femininity, she reminds her husband that maintaining appearances and proper hospitality are a direct reection upon him and his ability to uphold his reputation by demonstrating proper courtesies. It is the wifes appearance, not the husbands, which reects heavily on his reputation. Shakespeare and Dekker do not only use apparel as a plot device, but also use their female characters to comment on the role of apparel in navigating the impossible expectations for the Early Modern female. Through these works, three possible responses to the problem of fullling ideal Early Modern English womanhood are presented: a blatant disregard for expected and acceptable behavior, an unsuccessful attempt to fulll all the components of a model female, or the practical solution of compromising between what was expected and what was achievable. Reinforcing the notion that apparel was a tool for negotiating Early Modern femininity, each of these options directly involved clothing. At one end of the spectrum, there were the women, who, completely fed up with the impracticality of conduct guidelines, chose to ignore them completely and pursue a life of

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behavior only appropriate for a male. The most extreme example of this would be Lady Macbeth, a woman so blinded by ambition that she asks the spirits to unsex me here so that female frailty will not hinder her murderous rise to power.68 However, she is ultimately undone by her unwomanly behavior, as her remorse over multiple murders, particularly those of Macduffs wife and children, drives her to madness. With her suicide, Shakespeare indirectly warns against this rst option: a blatant disregard for ideal femininity. Dekker provides us with a far more realistic example of a woman who chooses to ignore what is expected of her, describing The Humor of a Woman that strives to maister her Husband.69 He describes these women as those who strive for the Breeches, an Early Modern way of describing women who wear the pants in the relationship.70 Telling stories of how such women be in odde contrarie humours, of purpose to keepe her Husband in continuall thought, and care how to please her, he demonstrates that such women inevitably bring ruin to their households through their inability to served as proper hostesses. Though a house needed effective management, the rules of hospitality dictated that a woman had to fulll a public role when entertaining guests within the privacy of her home. Dekker demonstrates that a woman who metaphorically strove for the Breeches primarily failed to exhibit proper hospitality. Because it required the reconciliation of private and public behavior in private space, being a proper hostess was perhaps the most important and most difcult aspect of adhering to proper conduct.71 In Dekkers story, the husband sends word that he is bringing guests home, and not only does the wife leave the house in a state of disarray and hide their good china, but she also refuses to present herself to the guests. The husband insists that his friends doe intreate her to come downe and bare them companie, shewing her what a shame it is, and how discourteously they will take it if she come not.72 Although she reluctantly agrees, her sour countenance leads his friends to [vow] never to be his guest any more.73 Thus, she fails to fulll her wifely responsibility to uphold the households reputation and maintain

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her husbands connections through good hospitality. Simply put, she fails to reconcile her public and private behavior. Dekkers used of the breeching metaphor highlights the relevance of apparel to the situation. By adhering to more masculine codes of behavior and metaphorically donning mens apparel, the wife deliberately ignores the expectations of ideal womanhood. While outright refusal was denitively cautioned against, Shakespeare also admonishes attempts to wholeheartedly adhere to the codes of perfect Early Modern femininity. Desdemona is, for all intents and purposes, the perfect Early Modern woman. In terms of the ideal public image, she is extremely virtuous. She is faithful. She is blindly obedient, declaring to Othello, Be as your fancies teach you;/ Whateer you be, I am obedient.74 She is demure, loving and chaste. In the realm of the household, she is an excellent hostess to Othellos fellow soldiers and condants, particularly Cassio and Iago. Indeed, she is sorely offended at the thought that women who do not adhere to her behavioral code survive. When Emilia informs her that adulterous women exist, she is aghast. She is even more so when she hears Iagos description of women as follows: You [women] are pictures out of door,/ Bells in your parlors, wildcats in your kitchens,/ Saints in your injuries, devils being offended,/ Players in your huswifery and huswives in your beds.75 Though this image is far more realistic and in line with the dualistic expectations of women in the day, Desdemona is horried that he could describe women as such. She cannot see the contradiction between a womans passions and passivity because she embodies the characteristics of ideal womanhood everyday. Ultimately, it is a misunderstanding over an item of clothing and her very attempts to t this idyllic notion of womanhood that result in Desdemonas demise. A love token, Desdemonas handkerchief, was a private item of apparel and intended only for her signicant other. When she loses it, the handkerchief moves from one private space to another and subsequently implicates her in an affair with Cassio. The ramications are betting of the time. An article of clothing found in an inappropriate private space, even

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if left by accident, could besmirch a womans reputation. A misplaced garment could incorrectly cast her as an utter failure in her conduct. Apparel did not always help a woman navigate the contradicting expectations of her. It could also hinder her attempts to adhere to socially accepted codes of behavior. Desdemonas resolute adherence to societal ideals brings about her undoing. Her unwavering obedience and resolute loyalty to Othello prevent her from effectively speaking out against his sudden unjust treatment of her and eventually lead her to essentially acquiesce to her own death. Similarly, her hospitality towards Cassio, which she believes to be in line with her expected wifely duties, only serves to conrm Othellos suspicions of their affair. Ironically, she is brought down by her own propriety and model behavior. Desdemona becomes a tragic example of the dangers of attempting to adhere too literally to the rules of female conduct. Through his characterizations of Katharine in Taming of the Shrew and Viola in
Twelfth Night, Shakespeare posits the notion that only through compromise can a

woman adhere to societys conicting notions of the ideal public and private female. While Katharine is anything but the ideal lady, her conduct and eventual adoption of a public face for entertaining and socializing illustrate a tacit acknowledgement of the impossible task presented to women. When the reader or audience rst meets Katharine, her moniker is well deserved; she is a shrew. However, her arguments with Petruchio and her conversations with her father imply that her disagreeable nature stems from her dissatisfaction with prescribed gender roles. She abhors the idea of marriage, a distaste which probably stems from her fear of societys rigid expectations for married women, particularly the requirements of silence and obedience. Her hatred of marriage is reected in her statement that she will dance barefoot on her [sisters] wedding day, a blatant violation of appropriate wedding apparel.76 Her rejection of proper female conduct is therefore evident in both her behavior and her disregard for suitable dress. Once again, apparel is linked to the embodiment of feminine ideals.

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142

However, following her marriage to Petruchio and his subsequent harsh treatment of her, Kate realizes that though fullling all aspects of ideal womanhood is impossible, maintaining an outward appearance of adherence is the best way to placate such frustrating, opposing expectations. Therefore, in her nal monologue when she asserts, I am ashamed that women are so simple/ To offer war where they should kneel for peace,/ Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway/ When they are bound to love, serve, and obey, Kate has not lost her essence or her re.77 She has merely learned how to play the game and now, publicly plays the role of the perfect wife. Interestingly, apparel plays an important part in Kates revelation. She only reaches this epiphany after she is confronted with the ramications of an incorrect clothing choice. Only then does she realize that, just as the wrong outt can beget a tarnished reputation, her inappropriate behavior can damage her husbands reputation. In Kates case, this revelation occurs at a wedding. Because of its highly public nature, a wedding was a crucial way for families to outwardly display their reputation and honor, both of which they hoped to enhance through the marriage union itself. Since a wedding also involved entertaining guests, it was a discrete moment of hospitality. Because of how important a wedding is, Petruchios decision to arrive caparisoned like the horse...a very monster in apparel78 was especially disrespectful of Kate. Using dress as an outward display of honor in the same way that women might display their virtue through apparel, Petruchio manages to teach Kate about the importance of appearances. His appearance reects negatively on her honor/reputation in the same way that her publicly shrewish behavior does upon him. He is offering her a lesson and a choice; if Kate wants him to change his public appearance, then she must also do the same and outwardly take on traits of the ideal public Early Modern woman. Once again, apparel plays an extremely important role in a womans attempts to toe the line between expected public and private ideals. This relationship between apparel and societal expectations is further reinforced through Kate and Petruchios argument over what clothes they will wear when they return to

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the hospitality of her fathers house. Though Kate hopes to portray an ideal femininity through dress, Petruchio purposely destroys her perfectly decent clothing and berates her tailor for his creations. As another ploy to tame the shrew, Petruchio announces that we will unto your fathers/ Even in these honest mean habiliments.79 Because of this, Kate is forced to wear inappropriate clothing that does not automatically reect well on her familys honor and reputation. She is therefore denied the opportunity to rely on her clothing to display an idyllic femininity. She cannot rely on apparel, so she has to exhibit ideal femininity through her conduct instead. Like many characters before her, Katherine has recognized the need for compromise in the quest for ideal Early Modern womanhood; like many characters before her, she reached this revelation after confronting the issues of hospitality and apparel. In Twelfth Night, Viola and Orsinos happy ending reects this same necessity for compromise and like with Katharine and Petruchio, apparel plays an important role in this compromise. As previously discussed, Viola and Orsinos intimate conversations are only possible because she is disguised as a man. It is this breach of feminine conduct and apparel which enables the two of them to get to know each other, thereby laying the foundation for Orsinos eventual profession, And since you called me master for so long,/ Here is my hand; you shall from this time be/ Your masters mistress.80 Through her breech of feminine ideals, Viola is poised to fulll that most supreme role of Early Modern womanhood. She is poised to become a wife. However, Shakespeare is wary of sending the message that it is okay to permanently out feminine ideals. Soon, it becomes necessary for Viola to return to more appropriate apparel and a socially accepted version of femininity. Before Viola can become his wife, Orsino lovingly demands of her, Let me see thee in thy womans weeds.81 In a key moment of the play, Viola then exits the stage and returns in traditional feminine garb. It is not enough that she merely remove a piece of her disguise; she must also put something on to signify her return to womanhood. Orsino directly acknowledges the importance of this clothing

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change with his closing words: Cesario, come --/ For so you shall be while you are a man,/ But when in other habits you are seen,/ Orsinos mistress and his fancys queen.82 Orsinos statement is replete with intriguing points. First, it seems that male attire is all that is required to be a man. When bedecked in masculine garb, Viola is granted all the powers and privileges that the average gentry male might possess. Secondly, she must be seen in other, meaning female, dress before she can be considered his wife. To be considered a man or woman, a person must be dressed in the appropriate apparel. Without the appropriate clothing, his or her gender expressivity is meaningless. Just as Viola cannot merely remove her disguise in order to become Orsinos wife, the Early Modern woman could not simply remove an outts formal components when moving from a public to a private space. She needed to wear an entirely different outt to help delineate between her role in public space and her role in private space. Furthermore, Violas costume change is not only the result of societal expectations to wear womens clothing, but also a manifestation of an Early Modern womans need to clothe herself in feminine virtues. It was not enough to simply quell any mannish behavior. She would also need to take up female virtues and reect those virtues through her apparel. Viola would need to wear her virtue in her clothing before she could be considered a real woman. This juxtaposition between Violas successful wooing of Orsino while dressed as a man and her subsequent return to model forms of femininity suggests that the only way to become societys ideal woman was through compromise.
CONCLUSION

Though apparel could help mediate the divide between the public and private woman, the complete ideal could never be achieved. As Shakespeare suggests through his explorations of cross-dressing, compromise was necessary for maintaining the image of perfect womanhood. Though outward adherence to an idyllic demeanor, as demonstrated by Katharine in Taming of the Shrew, was crucial, effective home management also required some traditionally masculine behaviors, as reected in Violas rise to wifehood

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via cross-dressing. Although apparel played a crucial role in helping Early Modern English women distinguish between public and private space and behavior, it more importantly served as a vital resource by helping women achieve societys ideal womanhood through compromise. Through their careful use of apparel, Early Modern English women could maintain their virtuous exteriors while simultaneously adopting unladylike behaviors that allowed them to more effectively manage their households. Today, our notion of apparel and its role in Early Modern life is distorted by contemporary media representations of the period. With the cast of The Tudors continually ripping each others clothes off in moments of passion, and Joseph Fiennes parading around in doublets unbuttoned to his mid-chest in Elizabeth and Shakespeare in Love, modern audiences tend to view Early Modern apparel as ornate versions of contemporary clothing: items that are there to cover us up, keep us warm, and occasionally, highlight some aspect of our personality. Given this, it is difcult for modern society to comprehend or appreciate the magnitude of apparels role in the construction and understanding of Early Modern femininity. However, its role needs to be recognized. Without apparels reconciliatory inuence, a woman would have been unable to achieve a mediated version of ideal femininity. She would have been unable to compromise between the realities of life and societys expectations of her. The Early Modern woman would have been doomed to Desdemonas fate, striving to achieve what could never be reached.

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REFERENCES PRIMARY SOURCES Anonymous. Hic Mulier or The Man-Woman, Being a Medicine to Cure the Coltish Disease of the Staggers in Masculine-Feminines of Our Times. 1620 Bull, Henry. Christian praiers and holie meditations as wel for priuate as publique exercise:
gathered out of the most godly learned in our time, by Henrie Bull. Whereunto are added the praiers, commonly called Lidleys praiers. 1596.

Castiglione, Baldesar. The Book of the Courtier, trans Charles S. Singleton. New York: Anchor Books, 1959. Castiglione, Baldesar. The Book of the Courtier, trans. Sir Thomas Hoby, 1561 in The Tudor Translations, ed. W. E. Henley. New York: AMS Press, 1967. Dekker, Thomas. The bachelors banquet: or A banquet for bachelors wherin is prepared
sundry daintie dishes to furnish their tables, curiously drest, and seriously serued in. Pleasantly discoursing the variable humours of women, their quicknesse of wittes, and unsearchable deceits. 1604.

Heywood, Thomas. A Curtaine Lecture (London, 1637) in Elizabethan Households: An Anthology ed. Lena Cowen Orlin. Washington D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1995. Markham, Gervase. The English Husbandman (London, 1635) in Elizabethan Households: An Anthology ed. Lena Cowen Orlin. Washington D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1995. Salter, Thomas. A mirrhor mete for mothers, matrons, and maidens, intituled the Mirrhor of
Modestie no lesse protable and pleasant, then necessarie to bee read and practiced. 1579.

Shakespeare, William. Othello. ed. Russ McDonald. New York: Penguin Books, 2001. Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew, ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1992. Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, ed. Jonathan Crewe. New York: Penguin Books, 2000. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth in The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton & Company, 1997. Smith, Henry. A Preparative to Mariage (London, 1591), in Elizabethan Households: An Anthology ed. Lena Cowen Orlin. Washington D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1995. Stubbs, Phillip. A Christal Glasse for Christian Women. Containing, A Most Excellent Discourse, of the Godly Life and Christian Death of Mistresse Katherine Stubs (London,1592), in Elizabethan Households: An Anthology ed. Lena Cowen Orlin. Washington D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1995.

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Whately, William. A Bride-Bush, Or a Wedding Sermon (London, 1617), in Elizabethan Households: An Anthology ed. Lena Cowen Orlin. Washington D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1995. SECONDARY SOURCES Arnold, Janet. Queen Elizabeths Wardrobe Unlockd. Leeds: Maney Publishing, 1988. Camden, Carroll. The Elizabethan Woman. Houston: The Elsevier Press, 1951. Heal, Felicity. Hospitality in Early Modern England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Hull, Suzanne W. Chaste Silent & Obedient: English Books for Women 1475-1640. San Marino: Huntington Library, 1982. Hull, Suzanne. Women According to Men: The World of Tudor-Stuart Women. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 1996. Jones, Ann Rosalind. Nets and Bridles: Early Modern Conduct Books and Sixteenth Century Womens Lyrics, in The Ideology of Conduct, Ed. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse. New York, Methuen, 1987. Kelso, Ruth. Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978. Leed, Drea. Overview of an Elizabethan Outt.http://www.elizabethancostume.net/overview.html Mikhaila, Ninya and Jane Malcolm-Davies. The Tudor Tailor. London: Batsford, 2006. Rosenthal, Margaret F. and Ann Rosalind Jones. Cesare Vecellios Habiti Antichi et Moderni: The Clothing of the Renaissance World. London: Thames & Hudson, 2008. Vincent, Susan. Dressing the Elite. New York: Berg, 2003.

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148

ENDNOTES
1 Felicity 2 Phillip

Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 10.

Stubbs, A Christal Glasse for Christian Women. Containing, A Most Excellent Discourse, of the Godly Life and Christian Death of Mistresse Katherine Stubs (London, 1592), in Elizabethan Households: An Anthology ed. Lena Cowen Orlin (Washington D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1995), 37. Bride-Bush, Or a Wedding Sermon (London, 1617), in Elizabethan Households: An Anthology ed. Lena Cowen Orlin (Washington D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1995), 39. Creek, AltaMira

3 William Whately, A

4 Suzanne W. Hull, Women According to Men: The World of Tudor-Stuart Women, (Walnut

Press, 1996), 46.

5 Castiglione, Baldesar, The Book of the Courtier, trans

W.E. Henley (New York, AMS Press, 1967), 216.

by. Sir Thomas Hoby, 1561, in The Tudor Translations ed.

6 Ibid, 217. 7 Ibid, 217. 8

Ibid, 219.

9 Ibid, 221. 10

Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, 220.

Queen Elizabeths Wardrobe Unlockd, (Leeds: Maney Publishing, 1988); Susan Vincent, Dressing the Elite (New York: Berg, 2003); Ninya Mikhaila and Jane Malcolm-Davies, The Tudor Tailor, (London: Batsford, 2006).

11 The

following summary of female apparel, its construction, and assemblage is derived from: Janet Arnold,

Additionally, see HYPERLINK http://www.elizabethancostume.netwww.elizabethancostume.net for brief overviews of Early Modern apparel.
12 13 14

Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of Southampton. Anon. 1603-1605 Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of Southampton, at her toilet. Unknown. c. 1600 Carroll Camden, The Elizabethan Woman, (Houston, The Elsevier Press, 1951), 219. and Jane Malcolm-Davies, The Tudor Tailor, 20.

15 Mikhaila 16 Drea 17 Drea 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid.

Leed. Overview of an Elizabethan Outt. http://www.elizabethancostume.net/overview.html Leed. Overview of an Elizabethan Outt.

20 Camden, Elizabethan Woman, 221. 21 Ibid. 22 Drea

Leed. Overview of an Elizabethan Outt. tomb in Bakewell, Derbyshire. http://www.kateemersonhistoricals.com/TudorWomenU-V.htm

23 Dorothy Vernons 24 Drea 25

Leed, Overview of an Elizabethan Outt

Elizabeth I: The Armada Portrait, c. 1580, Unknown artist Leed. Overview of an Elizabethan Outt Elizabeth, c. 1564, William Scrots

26 Drea

27 Princess

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28 Drea

Leed. Overview of an Elizabethan Outt

29 Susan Vincent, Dressing the Elite, (New York, Berg, 2003), 53 30 Ann 31

The Ideology of Conduct, Ed. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse (New York, Methuen, 1987), 7.

Rosalind Jones, Nets and Bridles: Early Modern Conduct Books and Sixteenth Century Womens Lyrics, in

For more on Early Modern female conduct and conduct books see: Carroll Camden, The Elizabethan Woman, (Houston: The Elsevier Press, 1951); Ruth Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978); Suzanne W. Hull, Chaste Silent & Obedient: English Books for Women 1475-1640 (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1982); Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans Charles S. Singleton (New York: Anchor Books, 1959).

32 Anon, Hic Mulier, 1620 33

Ibid. Smith, A Preparative to Mariage (London, 1591), in Elizabethan Households: An Anthology ed. Lena Cowen Orlin (Washington D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1995), 108. Salter, A mirrhor mete for mothers, matrons, and maidens, intituled the Mirrhor of Modestie no lesse protable and pleasant, then necessarie to bee read and practiced, (1579), 2.

34 Henry

35 Thomas

36 Salter, Mirrhor of Modestie, 4. 37 Henry

Bull, Christian praiers and holie meditations as wel for priuate as publique exercise: gathered out of the most godly learned in our time, by Henrie Bull. Whereunto are added the praiers, commonly called Lidleys praiers, 1596 Ibid. Anon. Hic Mulier. 1620.

38 39

40 Ibid. 41 42

Ibid, 33. Gervase Markham, The English Husbandman (London, 1635), in Elizabethan Households: An Anthology ed. Lena Cowen Orlin (Washington DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1995), 70. Ruth Kelsos fty-plus page Annotated Bibiliography of Early Modern conduct books in her Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance for an indication of the sheer volume of conduct books circulating in Early Modern

43 See

England.
45 46

44 Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England, 183

Ibid, 179. William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Russ McDonald (New York: Penguin Books, 2001) II.i, Line 104 Cowen Orlin, Elizabethan Households, 38.

47 Lena 48 See

also John Dod and Robert Cleavers A Godly Form of Household Government (1598) for more on bedroom lectures Heywoods work warns the male about the proclivity of a nighttime lecture from his wife, it does not warn the female to refrain from such behavior, suggesting that curtaine lectures were regular and semiacceptable occurrences. Thomas Heywood, Frontispiece to A Curtaine Lecture, 1637. Dekker, The bachelors banquet: or A banquet for bachelors wherin is prepared sundry daintie dishes to furnish their tables, curiously drest, and seriously serued in. Pleasantly discoursing the variable humours of women, their quicknesse of wittes, and unsearchable deceits, 1604, 1.

49 While

50

51 Thomas

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150

52

Ibid, 2.

53 Ibid, 2. 54 Ibid, 2. 55 Ibid, 4. 56 Shakespeare, Othello IV.iii 57 Ibid, IV.iii, Line 58

16.

William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, ed. Jonathan Crewe (New York: Penguin Books, 2000) I.iv, Lines 13-14. 107-109

59 Ibid, II.iv, Lines 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine (New York: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1992) I.ii Ibid, 6 The ceremony, in which, women are blessed after their recovery from childbirth. Dekker, 9 Ibid, 9 Ibid, 8 Ibid, 8 Ibid, 8 William Shakespeare. The Tragedy of Macbeth in The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New York: Norton & Company, 1997), I.v, Line 39 Dekker, Bachelors Banquet, 14. Ibid, 14.

69 70

71 Heal, Hospitality, 33. 72

Dekker, Bachelors Banquet, 15.

73 Ibid, 16. 74

Shakespeare, Othello, III.iii, Line 88-89 109-112

75 Shakespeare, Othello, II.i, Lines 76 Shakespeare, Shrew, II.i, Line 77 Ibid, V, ii. Lines

36

177-180. 64-69. 175-176. 318-320.

78 Ibid, III, ii. Lines 79 Ibid, IV, iii, Lines

80 Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, V.i, Lines 81

Ibid, V.i, Line 268. 378-381.

82 Ibid, V.i, Lines

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Casual Labor: How Farmville (2009) Converges Production, Consumption, and Play
JASON LIPSHIN
Department of Critical Studies Professor Anik Imre

Social participation is the oil of the digital economy. Trebor Scholz1 The consumer is sovereign in a jungle of ugliness, where the freedom of choice is imposed on him. Jean Baudrillard2

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HISTORIES OF PLAY AND LABOR

In his short essay Money for Nothing: Virtual Worlds and Virtual Economies, Steven Shaviro traces what he sees as the historical trajectory for play under capitalism. Citing Max Webers classic formulation of the ideological conditions for labor under modernity, Shaviro points out how the Fordist regimes adherence to the puritan work ethic was used to strictly separate labor from play; with the former exalted as salvation and the latter stigmatized as diabolical.3 He continues that it is this dialectical tension that allowed twentieth century theorists such as Johan Huizinga, Roger Callois, and Guy Debord to re-appropriate play as a potential for deance. Opposed to the strict regimentation and repetition of work on the factory assembly line, these theorists saw play as an irreducibly human activity occurring in a sphere completely separate from the realm of labor.4 Thus, just as Chaplins playful dancing and impish attitude in Modern

Times (1936) literally breaks down the well-oiled operations of the factory machine,
Huizinga, Callois, and Debord celebrated play as a kind of necessary agitation- a subversive antidote to the rational structures of a modern, productive society. But as Alexander Galloway notes in his book Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture, today, the entire distinction between play and labor has collapsed, problematizing the liberating potential of the former.5 The broad transformation from Fordist to Post-Fordist economies in late capitalist societies has transformed labor from an activity restricted to the enclosed space of the factory to a multiplication of activities expanding out into numerous spheres of ambient life, in which all of society is put to work6 often under the auspices of play. This convergence takes on its perhaps most literal instantiation in the discourse surrounding online video games, in which the rhetoric of this new labor is often framed by its absence. Shying away from any discussion of how play in online, corporate spaces has often been appropriated as free labor without consent from the cloud,7 marketing campaigns for online video games instead emphasize playful empowerment through catchphrases like interactivity, individuality, and freedom of choice. As the latest installment in the rise of the niche consumer, this suturing of the

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neoliberal rhetoric of choice, freedom and individuality to play and interactivity has also acted as another means to disavow control and banalize labor, especially as it shifts from the material realm of the factory to the more abstract realm of ickering signiers on computer screens.8 And with the popular advent of web 2.0 spaces for the production and distribution of user-generated content, corporations have even learned to expropriate value from many aspects of daily life previously attributed to play. For, as data mining in these spaces is increasingly used as a tool to monetize personal data into a commodity for advertising companies,9 nearly all online activities, from sexual desire to boredom to friendship have become fodder for speculative prot. All of these contemporary tropes are, thus, not so much about the disappearance of labor (in the traditional Marxist sense, much, though certainly not all, of this work has been outsourced to developing nations), but of the transference of its rational productivity (albeit in new forms) to the realm of play and consumption.10 Indeed, it is by co-opting the smooth veneer and slippery signiers of play that contemporary labor can hide under playfulness, and play can become more laborious, allowing Julian Kucklich to coin the neologism play-bor.11 There is perhaps no better space to investigate these historically situated convergences of work and play than the free-to-play (f2p), browser-based game Farmville (2009), created by the casual games company Zynga. Played through a users Facebook account, Farmville is a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) which allows users to cultivate land, plant and harvest crops, decorate personal farms, buy consumer items, and interact with other players in what is essentially nothing more than a game about farming.12 And yet, while this initial taxonomy of possible activities may seem to describe a game that is incredibly boring, Farmville has literally become the most popular video game in America. Astonishingly, its seventy-three million users have even surpassed the number of players attached to World of Warcraft (1994-2010) and the Nintendo Wii (2006).13 But even despite this massive popularity, Farmville remains an interesting case

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study for the convergence of play, consumption, and labor precisely because of the way it integrates all three so nefariously on the levels of representation, game mechanic, and political economy.
NOSTALGIA AND LABORIOUS PLAY

In a much publicized talk at the 2010 DICE Conference,14 game designer and Carnegie Mellon professor Jesse Schell describes what he sees as an increasing trend towards nostalgia for the real in the contemporary games market - a real which he claims has been displaced in an age of mass mediation and ubiquitous information technologies. According to Schell, while so-called hardcore video games have been preoccupied for decades with questions of fantasy and escape, these new, more casual games simulate a return to the real on two fronts: nostalgia for connection to nature and nostalgia for authentic human connection.15 Although we will explore this second aspect in more detail later, it is interesting to note the way in which this fantasy of returning to the rural earth, tilling the soil of the Heartland (or what Fox news might even call the real America), gets mapped onto the concept of labor in Farmville. For, in a fashion so startlingly direct that its tone borders on irony, Farmville utilizes new forms of post-industrial play-bor in order to simulate and retroactively also make playful and empowering, older mythologies surrounding work. This nostalgia for real labor is actualized in an environment of agrarian cuteness,16 which surprisingly, draws on a long history of farming simulations in video games. Earlier games like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992), Harvest Moon (1996), and Rune Factory (2006) all featured farming simulations that were to varying degrees central to game progression or ancillary side quests. However, according to many game critics, what makes Farmville unique as a farming simulation is the utter banality of its game play mechanic.17 To hoe a patch, you click on a square; to plant a seed, you click on a square; to harvest your crop, you click on a square. This threeclicks-per-square process is literally the core game mechanic for Farmville, and in its

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execution, one can easily imagine how the routine of planting and harvesting even a relatively small patch of squares (i.e. 14 x 14 = over six-hundred clicks) can start to give a player carpal tunnel.18 Thus, in almost a parody of the Post-Fordist condition, Farmvilles game play represents old labor while simulating new labor in the machinic space particular to the contemporary convergence of work and play. Inevitably, it is through Farmville that the space of the computer screen, the arena of both Post-Fordist leisure and work,19 allegorizes its own operations of power. Writing from the perspective of the Frankfurt School, Julian Stallabrass has detailed specically how video game play internalizes and reproduces these structures of labor production. Drawing on Theodor Adornos incredibly prescient vision of how labor inltrates and restructures free time in its own image, Stallabrass argues that button mashing in computer games produces in the player a simulacrum of industrial work, with the autonomy of each action, its repetition, precise timing and rare completion20 working to structure the body as a fragmented, allegorized, and reied self under the conditions of capital.21 Stallabrass descriptions take on particular signicance when seen in the context of Farmvilles notoriously boring and tedious play. While many role-playing games, for instance, feature frustrating patches of playtime in which repetitive and time consuming actions are necessary for advancement, the act of level grinding in these games is often seen as a necessary means to gain experience points to advance through harder and harder challenges in the narrative. In Farmville, the grind of labor is continuous and consistent - there is no acquisition of new abilities that allow for the exercise of new potentials, and the level of difculty and range of possible actions remains the same throughout the game.22 As the player invests more time and play-bor in the game, she can earn Farm Gold from her crops which she can spend in a plethora of different ways: to increase the size of her virtual property, customize her farm with various elements, or buy machines such as tractors which decrease her work load. And yet for all the myriad rewards the players

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can directly cull from hard work, the nature of play remains unchallenging, governed only by an increased (and increasingly substantial) commitment in temporal investment. Such laborious play would seem to be anathema to the very denition of game play, but because Farmville structures its core play mechanic around a system of extrinsic rewards,23 it is able to use these rewards as a cheerful veneer to what is in fact an interface that inherently devalues the act of play into labor.24 Thus, while, initially, there may be the implied hope that present-day grinding and the accompanying accumulation of property and goods will eventually lead to uninhibited play in the future, much of the irony of the game lies in the fact that more property necessitates more labor and care. And because Farmville operates according to a real time schedule, as opposed to an in-game, internal clock, the game is built to manage free time and attention by incentivizing the player to come back at shorter and shorter intervals, thereby privileging and rewarding obsessive play in a strange combination of agency and control. In the words of one critic, the situation of play in Farmville is much like a kid being bribed with pizza to do his homework25 through a casual system of work-and-reward, play as work is seen only as a means to an end. And if proliferating rewards can only come attached to proliferating responsibilities and social obligations towards these properties, it is clear that Farmville mirrors the condition of subjectivity under contemporary consumer capitalism.
CONSUMERISM AND IDENTITY LABOR

Because Farmville is predicated on a structure of dull, repetitious labor rewarded only by the amount of time and effort the player directly invests into the game, it draws heavily on the mythical surrounding of labor and reward conceptualized by the American Dream. Unlike most other games which privilege players who are able to solve intellectually challenging puzzles or display complex feats of manual dexterity, Farmville incentivizes the individual hard worker who grinds away at predictable labor by taunting him with the promise of equally predictable rewards: new drapes for the house, a new cat for the barn, a larger property. And yet because the tasks are easier and almost wholly dependent on

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the players individual labor investment, and because it provides a wide array of rewards from which to choose, Farmville constructs a fantasy of individual empowerment and freedom of choice, despite the clear ways in which the game mechanic manages player action and attention. As Farmville houses its operations on the social networking site Facebook, this simulation of freedom of choice is directly related to the work involved in customizing a players online prole identity. Appropriating danah boyds conceptual framework for looking at social networks, I would argue that grinding in Farmville is a productive activity precisely because the rewards it generates relate specically to the work of social capital aggregation and identity construction already existing on the Facebook platform.26 Although discourses surrounding status and distinction certainly apply to other networked, fantasy contexts (such as in World of Warcraft), the labor surrounding the aggregation of virtual items in Farmville is directly related to the players photographic avatar on Facebook which, according to boyd, is a social networking site that displays a comparatively high congruence between online and ofine identity.27 Thus, in addition to the customizability and personalization of the players prole available through the regular Facebook platform, Farmville gives the player the opportunity to add game property to their personal walls in virtual displays of conspicuous consumption. As Rebekah Willett suggests, this allows Farmville players to act as bricoleurs of their own identity, appropriating and recontextualizing virtual consumer items as signiers of their varied lifestyles and ideologies.28 It should be obvious, then, that these rhetorics of individual empowerment and freedom of choice built into the marketing schemes (and programmed code) for Farmville, Facebook, and other web 2.0 phenomena are often commensurate with a neoliberal construction of consumer identity.29 With equal ability to contribute, create, and level up through the social ladder, the neoliberal, individualist subject, like the Farmville player, knows nothing of boundaries or structural inequalities; only that he

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is free to buy what he pleases, and pull himself up by the labor of his own bootstraps. But ironically, it is in the context of Farmville that the gospel surrounding the supposed freedoms of play in neoliberalism and interactive media begins to unravel, as the laborious, structured, and controlling aspects of the game play also begin to reveal themselves. Here, it seems appropriate to invoke Baudrillards early essay Consumer Society, which, perhaps more than any other work I have cited thus far, conceptualizes this convergence between production, consumption, and play in prescient ways. Although Baudrillard critiques the classical Marxist emphasis on production to shift towards a new emphasis on consumption, it is important to remember that, for Baudrillard, consumption takes up the logical and necessary relay from production.30 While production may have been the key organizing and rationalizing structure of social life during the industrial era, Baudrillard claims that the new mode of social control has shifted to consumption, which he explicitly states is the eld of play.31 As in the interrelation between the playful rhetorics of neoliberalism and web 2.0 interactivity discussed earlier, Baudrillards playful consumer-subject is fundamentally based in the production of an impression of choice and freedom. And if, as Baudrillard suggests, the architecture that most epitomizes this impression of choice is the shopping mall, it bears mentioning that, for boyd, the mall was also the clearest predecessor to hangout sites for youth in the 1980s and 90s prior to the advent of Facebook.32 As equally consumerist spaces, both Facebook and shopping malls provide spaces where choice, play, and freedom are in constant tension with the work of identity management, exploitation, and control. Thus, although Farmville provides an array of consumer objects to choose from as rewards for its laborious play, in Baudrillardian fashion, these objects are nothing but a network of interchangeable signs whose play of signication creates an endless loop of desire for the consumer. By existing within the networked realm of Facebook, the public display of virtual consumer items that play in Farmville provides does indeed

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serve the purpose of self-regulation and integration within the group. In fact, as each player displays her private property publicly and accordingly adjusts her identity under the control of what boyd calls impression management,33 she is integrated into the consumerist regime of neoliberal subjects, and the network of signs and ideologies which self-regulate and constitute it.
SURVEILLANCE, DATA MINING, AND SOFTWARE AS IDEOLOGY

If, in the new, networked regime of control, traces of personal data have become the new capital, the continuous management of identity in social networking sites becomes laborious not only in the interest of the users aggregation of social capital, but also as a productive activity for those marketing rms looking to extract free R&D research. Although the strategies used by Zynga to collect this data are numerous, one of the methods that has proven most successful (particularly in the case of younger players) has been the integration of so-called lead generation surveys into game play. Utilizing strategies similar to those discussed by Ellen Seiter in her critical analysis of the earlier, online childrens game Neopets (1999),34 Farmville actually one-ups its predecessor by privileging these lead generations surveys over the core game mechanic. Appearing as friendly questions asked by cute-and-cuddly characters within the game, these surveys ask players their opinions in the interest of extracting free marketing research in exchange for large amounts of in-game virtual currency. Frequently, these characters will also further incentivize children to provide their own or their parents contact information, which, according to comments on Farmville message boards, are incredibly difcult mailing lists to get off of.35 By promoting these surveys as an opportunity to gain Farm Cash far more quickly than through the laborious grind of the core three-clicks game mechanic, Farmville situates players in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between hard-won success through laborious play and an immediate rise to virtual fortune through lling out disguised consumer surveys. By casually divesting their personal information and/or thoughts on various consumer questions, players of

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these surveys reify their online selves into information commodities, selling their data to marketers eager to exploit crowd sourced, and thus far more wide-ranging, diverse, and accurate, consumer information.36 Although lead generation surveys remain an important part of Zyngas self-confessed strategy to fuck the users,37 they are not necessarily the main strategy that Farmville has used to extract economic value from the act of play. Rather, more often without the expressed consent of the player, Zynga (in conjunction with the complicity of Facebook) has cultivated a nasty habit of practicing surveillance on their users, invisibly mining their personal data in the interest of selling it to advertisers. But if all of our prior discussion has focused solely on discussions of play-bor at the level of the interface, how can we begin to deal with those exploitative strategies used by games that lie embedded within the machinic substrate? How can we begin to critique the expropriation of value from personal data traces when this operation is wholly invisible to the users naked eye? As Wendy Hui Kyong Chun notes in her essay On Software: Or the Persistence of Visual Knowledge, this potential for the exercise of computational surveillance as a kind of productive activity lies in the political ontology of the computer. Dening the computer as an ideological object par excellence, Chun argues that software presents something of a paradox - it simultaneously seems to be completely transparent in its working and yet the majority of its machinic processes remain encapsulated and invisible to the user. For Chun, this disconnect between surface and depth, software and hardware operates as an articial construction of ideology, in that, just as ideology represents our imaginary relationship to the real, software represents our imaginary relationship to hardware.38 Thus, if software, like ideology, relies on a vertical, depth model of false consciousness, hiding processes just as often as it seems to reveal them, it also breeds a peculiar kind of disempowerment, relegating agency to the machine just as often as the user is ironically made to feel empowered.

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In embedding data mining, intelligent networking algorithms, and personal prole capture into the everyday playful activities of Farmville and the Facebook platform on which it operates, Zynga has, therefore, taken this notion of software as ideology and extended it to the point hypertrophy. By quite literally hiding the expropriation of value and the act of labor in the computers machinic site of production (which, in classical Marxist fashion, is always hidden from view), Farmville performs a stunning ideological reversal: on the interface level, the user is made to feel like the heroic, playful, and autonomous master of her own machine, while underneath it all, she is reduced to and exploited for the spectacle of her own data. Of course, all of this blatant exploitation of play is, in the end, executed in the name of providing the consumer with a more customized and personalized online shopping experience. Under the auspices of empowering the consumer, such crowd sourced data mining is said to provide the impetus for more intelligent marketing algorithms which provide you with an idea of you which is totally custom made - perfectly tailored to the idea of commodities that you must want. Softening surveillance by positioning it as a necessary means to construct the users own customized shopping experience, Farmvilles convergence of consumption as production and play as the creation of free value for proprietary interests situates it as a perfect example of what Tiziana Terranova has called free labor - a new, more banal and playful version of work, specic to the age of computer networking.39
CONCLUSION

Clearly, despite its benevolent labeling as a mere casual game, Farmville raises a number of questions related to new congurations of play and labor which are specic to the political ontology of web 2.0 computer networks. For one, how can users be sure of the integrity of their play experiences, if there is always the possibility that this play can be used as fodder for exploitation? Or, as Trebor Sholz puts it in his introduction to The Internet as Playground and Factory, what does it mean for the distinction between waged and unwaged labor to be largely indistinguishable, particularly when it is difcult to know when one is and is not laboring?40 And nally, and perhaps most importantly,

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what does it mean when we devalue the potential of play as a category of opposition to labor and exploitation, as a space of freedom, or even as a tactic for political subversion? Inevitably, for just a game about farming, it is striking how Farmville in raising these questions about so-called interactive media, posits a space not unlike Baudrillards consumerist dystopia that pivots on the contradiction of simultaneous control and freedom. For, if Farmville is a game that is marketed on the promise of providing an endless buffet of choices to the player, it is interesting how this freedom of choice for the user is always congured as a freedom of choiceimposed on him.41

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ENDNOTES
1 Eugene 2 Jean

Lang College. Introduction. The Internet as Factory and Playground: A Conference on Digital Labor. http://digitallabor.org. Baudrillard, Consumer Society in Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings. (Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 43. Shaviro. Money for Nothing: Virtual Worlds and Virtual Economies. http://shaviro.com/Othertexts/ articles.html

3 Steven 4 See

Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, (New York: Beacon, 1971). Huizingas notion of the magic circle epitomizes this view of play as a place of leisure completely separate from the realm of work. Galloway. Ch. 3- Social Realism in Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. (University of Minnesota Press, 2006), p. 76. Lang College, Introduction.

5 Alex

6 Eugene 7 The

term cloud is often broadly used in Web 2.0 discourse to refer to any amorphous group of users who engage in participatory activities online. The terms etymology refers to the cloud drawings often used in the 1950s to represent telephone networks, but which were later appropriated to represent the Internet in network diagrams. See Writing and Speaking. Sellsbrothers.com. http://www.sellsbrothers.com/ writing/intro2tapi/default.aspx?content=pstn.htm.

8 Baudrillard, pp. 29-56. 9 Eugene 10 Eugene 11

Land College, Introduction. Land College, Introduction.

Julian Kucklich. Precarious Playbour: Modders and the Digital Games Industry in Fibreculture, no. 5, September 2005. http://journal.breculture.org/issue5/kucklich.html farmville. Liszkiewicz. Cultivated Play: Farmville. Kotaku. http://kotaku.com/5521250/cultivated-play-

12 A.J. Patrick 13 Ibid. 14 Jesse

Schell, Design Outside the Box (video presented at 2010 DICE Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada, February 18, 2010) http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/dice-2010-design-outside-the-box-presentation. DICE stands for Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain. arguments are, of course, textbook Baudrillardian hyperreality. Just as Disneylands fantasy was able to make other constructed spaces look more real by comparison, the simulated fantasies of World of Warcraft also make Farmvilles pixilated plants and dirt look strangely more realistic.

15 Schells

16 Michael Arrington. Scamville: The 17 Liszkiewicz. 18 Ibid. 19 Julian

Social Gaming Ecosystem of Hell. Tech Crunch. http://techcrunch. com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming-ecosystem-of-hell.

Stallabrass. Just Gaming: Allegory and Economy in Computer Games in New Left Review, no. 198, March-April 1993, pp. 83-106.

20 Stallabrass, p. 97. 21 Ibid., p. 87. 22 Chris

Remo. GDC: Heckers Nightmare Scenario- A Future of Rewarding Players for Dull Tasks. Gamasutra. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27646/GDC_Heckers_Nightmare_Scenario_A_Future_Of_Rewarding_ Players_For_Dull_Tasks.php.

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23 [Extrinsic

rewards is a concept often used in game studies that refers to the privileging of rewards over game play itself. Often used pejoratively, the concept devalues the process of play through its insistently goal-oriented logic. am indebted to my CTIN 462 professor, William Huber, for this concept.

24 I

25 Remo. 26 danah

Buckingham, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2007).

27 boyd, pp. 13-15. 28 Rebekah Willett, Consumer

MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume, edited by David

boyd, Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life in

Buckinghm, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2007), pp. 49-70.

29 Ibid., pp. 50-51. 30 Baudrillard, p. 46. 31 Baudrillard, pp. 51-58. 32 boyd, p. 20. 33 boyd, pp. 11-13. 34 Ellen 35

MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning- Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume, edited by David

Citizens Online: Structure, Agency, and Gender in Online Participation. In

Seiter. Ch. 5: Virtual Pets- Devouring the Childrens Market in The Internet Playground, (Peter Lang. 2005), pp. 83-100. Remo.

36 Kucklich. 37 Arrington. 38 Wendy

Hui Kyong Chun. On Software: Or the Persistance of Visual Knowledge, JSTOR: Grey Room, No. 18 (Winter, 2004), pp. 27. Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy. Electronic Book Review.

39 Tiziana Terranova, Free 40 Eugene

Lang College, Introduction.

41 Baudrillard, p. 43.

Representing Disaster and Magical Realism in AFTER THE QUAKE: Illustrating Anxiety of the Self
VICTOR LUO
Department of English Professor William Handley

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On January 17, 1995, the Kobe region of Japan, the second-most populated industrial area of Japan after Tokyo, was struck by a 7.2 earthquake that lasted only 20 seconds, but killed over 5,000 people, made 300,000 people homeless and caused approximately $100 billion USD worth of damage.1 The Japanese people were devastated by this disaster not only because of the lives lost and damage caused, but also by the realization of the fragility of their lives. The social fabric of Japan had become undermined by what many criticized to be a slow and poorly executed response by the government. Haruki Murakami, abroad at the time, was profoundly affected by the extent to which Japan as a society had undergone massive hardships as he wrote:
I spent my last year abroad in a sort of fog when two major catastrophes struck Japan: the Great Osaka-Kobe earthquake and the Tokyo gas attack[These were] two of the gravest tragedies in Japans post-war history. It is no exaggeration to say that there was a marked change in the Japanese consciousness before and after these events. These twin catastrophes will remain embedded in our psyche as two milestones in our life as a people. (Rubin 238).

These feelings of an altered post-disaster consciousness compelled Murakami to write six short stories that take place one month following the earthquake and are compiled into a collection named after the quake. When a natural disaster of signicant proportion strikes and takes scores of lives, the affected nation stands unhinged as it hears the news of death; response by the government falls under the intense critical eye of its citizens as they confront their mortality and search for some reassurance in the power of their country to protect them. A natural disaster is a curious thing: it is both an event that physically affects people injuring them or taking their liveswithin a short period of time. It is also an event that people watch and hear of from afar, held within a shared consciousness of region/nation as a terrifying experience not lived by ones self, but by ones conception of other for a period of time longer than the duration of the disaster itself, continuing long after the

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disaster has hit and passed. Maurice Blanchot writes about the latter experience in his book The Writing of the Disaster, arguing that the disaster is an experience that jars ones sense of self and time:
The disaster ruins everything, all the while leaving everything intact. It does not touch anyone in particular; I am not threatened by it, but spared, left aside. It is in this way that I am threatened; it is in this way that the disaster threatens in me that which is exterior to mean other than I who passive become other. There is no reaching the disasterit is rather always already pastalready withdrawn or dissuaded [the future]; there is no future for the disaster, just as there is no time or space for its accomplishment. (Blanchot 1-2)

Blanchots text poses the problem of giving expression to disaster, of creating a text that ultimately becomes a mere secondhand experience for its readersmuch of the experience of a disaster is lost in communication in the distance between rsthand and secondhand accounts. Any information about a disaster is fragmented, authenticity of meaning lost between transmissions of a person who watched from afar or heard through talk. The individual has only pieces of information from which to build an incomplete picture of the disaster. Even those who witness and survive a disaster rsthand cannot build a complete picture of the disaster, as the experience of survivors is no substitution for the rsthand experience of those who died and have no means of expression. The problem of writing about disaster lies in addressing the fragmentation of meaning caused by the inability to express the entirety of disasters effects. Murakami lived this problem as he had been away from Japan for an extended period of time when the earthquake occurred, hearing from various friends the social unrest in his native country. One of his friends even advised, Better stay clear of Tokyo for the time being (Rubin 238). None of the stories within after the quake are set within the Kobe area nor do they follow characters who had experienced the earthquake. Like most of Murakamis

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protagonists throughout his novels, the protagonists in after the quake are all ordinary people living middle-class lives, quietly passive and socially conservative. These characters have only heard of the earthquake through the news and are only peripherally connected to the disaster. However, the characters of after the quake demonstrate the kind of self-estranged thinking about disaster that Blanchot describes: none of them were or are threatened by the disasters effects itself, but it is their witnessing its threat to the exterior and the realization of their inability to reach the disaster, to make sense of or frame its consequences, that plagues their sense of self. Murakami explores the effects of the earthquake through the aesthetic of the everyday, and by doing so, exposes the anxiety that exists in the unconscious and in the fabric of Japanese society. Anxiety, as represented in after the quake, is the result of what Blanchot describes as the confrontation with the meaning of self and its relation to the exterior as it is undermined by disaster. Forming meaning, then, as it is fragmented by the presence of disaster, becomes a burden for those affected by disaster. As the perceived notion of everyday safety is undermined by disaster, the reliability of traditional thinking is also undermined, as people doubt the institutions and values that have struggled or failed to protect them. Though after the quake is arguably one of Murakamis most realistic texts, with an overt supernatural presence appearing in only one story, the narrative style of magical realism prevails over the collection as the characters senses of the real are problematized as the earthquake disrupts their everyday lives. The narrative style of magical realism is the collections vehicle for Blanchots conception of the estrangement of self as caused by disaster because its techniques delineate the nature of meaning. As Maggie Ann Bowers posits, magical realism is the mode where the narrative is constructed in order to provide a realistic context for the magical events of the ction[so that] it can stretch what is acceptable as real to its limits (Bowers 22). Through the use of magical realism, the burden of directly representing the disaster is avoided; there remains a profound representation of disaster as the creator of a chaotic and liminal environment in which

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characters identities and society are threatened. As a nonlinear text, after the quake abandons any direct discussion of causality in disaster and its ensuing consequences. However, each story is related in progressive sequence, each of them representing aspects of meaning-making amongst a reality/magic disruption caused by disaster and sharing codes and symbols amongst themselves. Murakamis representation of disaster in after the quake is an apt address to the problems inherent in relating the experience of disaster. It takes a multi-perspectival approach, using magical realisms sense of a delineated or defocalized natural-supernatural coexistence in the way Wendy Faris imagines. Faris argues that defocalization creates a narrative space of the ineffable inbetween [of the realistic and the magical] because its perspective cannot be explained, only experienced (Faris 46). Magical realism tackles meaning-making at the level of its basic units, presenting a collage of information where both the real and the supernatural can exchange ideas in an equal discourse:
Recogniz(ing) the supernatural as contrary to the laws of nature, [the implied author of a magical realist work] tries to accept the world view of a culture in order to describe it. He abolishes the antinomy between the natural and supernatural on the level of textual representation, and the reader, who recognizes the two conicting logical codes on the semantic level, suspends his judgment of what is rational and what is irrational in the ctitious world. (Chanady 25-26).

In accordance with how Blanchot articulates that disaster does not allow us to entertainthe question: what have you done to gain knowledge of the disaster? (Blanchot 3), magical realism creates an environment where the articulation of such knowledge is suspended in favor of its pursuit. after the quake mediates the problem of disasters expression by representing disaster through the experiences of the everyday person within a meaning-delineated magic realist setting in which there is a failure to explain disaster, but a profound feeling of the pains it causes, thereby illustrating the basic human level from which all meanings of self are constructed.

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The rst story, UFO in Kushiro, follows the life of electronics salesman Komura as he confronts the strange disappearance of his wife, who had been glued to the news about the Kobe earthquake despite having no friends or family in Kobe (as far as he knew). The disaster of the earthquake represented in this story is an utterly foreign thing that undermines Komuras perception of what is real and what is not. The story opens with the description of Komuras wife as utterly engrossed by the news of disaster, barely moving, a stone wall of silence surround(ing) her (Murakami 4). Komura lives a comfortable life, enjoying the considerable wealth he makes from his job, remaining faithful to his wife - a choice that puzzles his friends as she could not have seemed more ordinary (Muakami 4-5). However, when his wife suddenly vanishes, she leaves a note saying, despite Komura being a kind husband, she cannot live with him because living with him is like living with a chunk of air (Murakami 6). As Blanchot describes, the disaster here is an enigmatic thing with a strange paradoxical presence, ruining everything but leaving everything intact. Without confrontation, without time for emotion or reasoning, with only an abstract explanation, Komuras marriage ends, without a solid sense of the earthquake having caused it. When Komura tries to read the news about the earthquake, the accounts merely seem odd, lacking in depth to him, his only thoughts returning to his wife, questing what could she have seen in them? (Murakami 9). The disaster is merely a thing that dees understanding in the opening of after the quake, its unexplainable presence causing other events in Komuras life to be unexplainable. At the suggestion of a colleague who requests he deliver a small mysterious box, Komura decides to take a vacation to Hokkaido. Upon arriving and delivering the package, Komura spends time with a young woman, Shimao, who consoles Komura about the everyday occurrence of divorce as she tells the similar story of a friend of hers whose wife had left him all of a sudden a week after she had seen a UFO. Later, in a hotel room, Shimao tells him a strange story about having sex in the forest with the fear of being found by bears, bears that appear in the last story of the collection. Shimao and Komura then try to have sex, only to end up with Komura failing at it. Komura relays to Shimao

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about having been called a chunk of air, then asks all of a sudden, admitting to being bothered by his ignorance, what the box contained. Shimao teases him, saying he is so bothered because the box contained something inside him that now he will never get back. Upon hearing this, Komura realized that he was on the verge of committing an act of overwhelming violence (Murakami 23). The story ends with Komura expressing his tedium at this ordeal of not knowing anything, feeling though he has come a long way, only to have Shimao play with him as if casting a magic spell[and say] But really youre just at the beginning (Murakami 23). By beginning after the quake with UFO in Kushiro, Murakami establishes how subtly the everyday is disturbed by disaster. Komura is the very picture of the comfortable middleclass, but he must confront that image of himself as supercial and empty, a chunk of air amidst his inability to understand his wife and the disaster. The mystery element common to magical realism suspends Komuras ability to gauge what is real; between the mysteries of his wife, the disaster, the box, and the story of the UFO, there is no ability to draw a fullling connection. Even though the occurrence of divorce is rationalized as an everyday thing, the glaring omission of the motivation for it problematizes that rationalization, especially in light of the UFO story that muses about the possibility of abduction or hypnotism. The overwhelming violence Komura feels when considering his emptiness is Murakamis reference to the Tokyo gas attack perpetrated by religious extremists two months after the earthquake (Rubin), indicating his stance that such terrorism was committed partly out of feelings of discontentment at this perceived sense of emptiness. The box Komura delivers is an enigmatic thing that reappears in the last story of the collection and represents the part of self that becomes part of an exchange in ones search for meaning. Magical realism, as it builds in strangeness within the collection, unravels the distinction between real and unreal in order to pave a way of dealing with the disaster that disrupts the reliability of everyday thinking, achieving what Faris conceives of as narrative distance that mediates the blind spots of the individual perspectives by moving the voices into the universals of humanity (Faris 122). Shimao

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expresses her realization that a solid sense of time is impossible amidst a disaster. As Blanchot describes it, the emptiness and feeling of having come a long way merely signal the beginning of a formation of meaning. The second story, Landscape with Flatiron, follows young runaway Junko as she sits on the beach and builds a bonre with Miyake, a kindly older man she befriended, and her boyfriend, Keisuke. The building of a bonre is the metaphorical conceit driving the story as Junko meditates on Jack Londons To Build a Fire, which she interprets to be about a man fundamentally longing for death[who] knew that it was the right ending for him. And yet he had to go on ghting with all his might. He had to ght against an overwhelming adversary in order to survive (Murakami 29). Murakamis descriptions of the re and the way Miyake builds it are romantic, wistfully capturing the gathering of driftwood and the gradual transformations of sparks to ames: the bonre is the place of comfort and community for the three as Junko thinks, The ames accepted all things in silence, drank them in, understood, and forgave. A family, a real family, was probably like this (Murakami 32). Keisuke initially teases Miyake for his Kansai accent (an accent people from the Kobe area tend to have) and asks if he has any connection to Kobe. Miyake replies he had severed all ties with Kobe years ago, but, after Keisuke leaves, admits to Junko he had a wife and two kids, who lived in Kobe and whose histories and current whereabouts go unrevealed. Miyake and Junko, sitting by the bonre, contemplate the idea of death, to which Miyake admits his premonitory fear of dying locked in a refrigerator. Junko confesses that she is completely empty and asks what she can do, to which Miyake replies they can die together. Junko agrees, but Miyake tells her to wait until the re burns out; the story ends with Junko taking a nap, falling into a deep sleep. Similar to Londons To Build a Fire, the re is the symbol of life keeping the protagonists alive. Landscape with Flatiron continues with the idea of emptiness posited in UFO in Kushiro as the characters stare into the re, the symbol of life, while they consider

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death the next step to realizing their own emptiness. Emptiness in both stories is a symptom of realizations through relationships, Komura with his vanished wife and Junko and Miyake with their respective families. In both this story and the last story in the collection, Murakami introduces a metactive intertextuality that drives the way the story forms meaning, relying on the construction of other stories to draw out meaning. Rebecca Suter writes about Murakamis tendency to introduce writers and stories into his texts:
The way he introduces writers and texts within the text breaks the illusion of reality and destabilizes a univocal vision of the world. The characters, and the reader with them, are made aware of the composite, stratied, and nonlinear nature of texts, and ultimately of reality itselfthe writers in the texts behave like detectives, using their deductive ability to reconstruct reality from tracesWriter-narrators in Murakamis texts often behave like detectives, deducing facts from clues, in an attempt to gain control over reality. Like detective-narrators, writer-narrators are exposed to failureas the text clearly hints at a possible different reading of the events (Suter 98, 101, 103)

In the story, the reality of emptiness and death is the thing in discourse amidst the presence of disaster and loss and ideas observed in literature. As Blanchot writes, Dying is, speaking absolutely, the incessant imminence whereby life lasts, desiring. The imminence of what has already always come (Blanchot 41). To Blanchot, thinking about death is the contradictory state where time is reduced to the lingering of desires. Keisuke articulates this sense of time that comes with the thought of death, saying, The trouble is, I dont have a damn thing to do with anything fty thousand years agoor fty thousand years from now, either. Nothing. Zip. Whats important is now. Of course, as the character unaffected by loss or disaster, this is easy for Keisuke to say. Both Junko and Miyake are plagued by the way they cannot reach death, disaster or within themselves because they have been displaced relationally because of their own disasters Junko, the estrangement from her parents and Miyake, the unstated fate of his family. However, with the presence of Londons story, there is the stratied sense of reality that leaves

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the ending ambivalent, which seems to be the point of the story. Miyake paints a picture with the name of the story, Landscape with Flatiron, that is a symbolic experiment in meaning: he depicts an iron in a room, but he argues he has not drawn an iron and then retreats into silence when questioned about the contradiction. Junko believes Londons story to be about the longing for death, but she also believes in the representation of life and family in the bonre and the intimacy she feels with Miyake in shared feelings of emptiness. The re does not go out in the storys end, and instead of dying, Junko sleeps, to which Miyake responds, When the re goes out, youll start feeling cold. Youll wake up whether you want to or not (Murakami 45). Landscape with Flatiron achieves Blanchots idea of death within disaster as imminence of life lasting and desiring, wherein the next step after confronting the feelings of emptiness following disaster is sifting through the stories and experiences one observes for meaning to nd a stratied reality where one is caught between life and death when thinking about ones self. As the storys ending dialogue suggests, the confrontation with death compels waking, a shift in consciousness that occurs without respect to ones desires or preconceived sense of meaning. The third story, All Gods Children Can Dance, follows Yoshiya, a young man dealing with his fear of sexual attraction to his beautiful mother, only eighteen years older than him, his lack of faith in her cult-religion that claims Yoshiya is the son of God, and a man he follows who he believes is his biological father. Yoshiyas mother tells him that, in her younger days, she had slept with numerous men, had taken rigorous contraceptive methods, yet still became pregnant multiple times and got multiple abortions until she met Mr. Tabata, one of the cult- religions guides, who convinced her that this was a sign that God wanted her to give birth. Growing up, Yoshiya becomes disillusioned by the obvious contradiction between his utter ordinariness and the unproven belief that he is the son of God, and when he prays for the ability to catch outeld ies as some proof of God, Mr. Tabata tells him that it is wrong to test God as such. When he sees a man who matches the description of the last man his mother slept with, he follows him

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until he loses him in a deserted baseball eld, where he realizes that his internal conicts result from the ignorance of his origin:
Now that the stranger had disappeared, however, the importance of the succeeding acts that had brought him this far turned unclear inside him. Meaning itself broke down and would never be the same again, just as the question of whether he could catch an outeld y had ceased to be a matter of life and death to him anymoreWhat was I hoping to gain from this? he asked himself as he strode ahead. Was I trying to conrm the ties that make it possible for me to exist here and now? Was I hoping to woven into some new plot, to be given some new and better-dened role to play? No, he though, thats not it. What I was chasing in circles must have been the tail of the darkness inside me. I just happened to catch sight of it, and followed it, and clung to it, and in the end let it y into still deeper darkness. Im sure Ill never see it again (Murakami 63-64).

Standing there, he remembers his ex-girlfriend who called him Super-Frog and his old love of dancing, and begins to dance right there with a reconciliation about the universality of ignorance as part of the rhythm of the earth:
It struck him what lay buried far down under the earth on which his feet were so rmly planted: the ominous rumbling of the deepest darkness, secret rivers that transported desire, slimy creatures writhing, the lair of earthquakes ready to transform whole cities into mounds of rubble. These, too, were helping to create the rhythm of the earth (Murakami 66-67).

Darkness and secret rivers signify things Yoshiya realizes he does not know, but he accepts that things like the destruction of earthquakes are part of a larger, cosmic picture of the rhythm of the earth, which gives him the motivation to dance. All Gods Children Can Dance, is the indirect answer to the questions posed in the earlier two stories regarding the confrontation of emptiness and death, changing the perspective from which one gauges the self. In keeping with a narrative style common to magical realist texts, the story sidesteps any attempt to distinguish a hierarchy

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between Yoshiyas origin stories. Compared to other stories in the collection, the disaster is the least present in this story, appearing only on a newspaper Yoshiya passes by, which prompts the reminder that his mothers religious cult is part of the relief effort. Emptiness and death, confrontations with the possibilities of the future, are turned inward and introspective, searching for meaning in ones origin and the past. However, as Blanchot described, there is neither a future nor a past that is reachable in the fragmenting experience of disaster:
There is no origin, if origin presupposes an original presence. Always past, long since past already, something that has passed without being presentsuch is the immemorial which gives us forgetfulness: every beginning is a beginning over (Blanchot 117).

Ultimately, the knowledge of his origin is negligible compared to Yoshiyas realization of the rhythm of the earth in mediating his internal conicts. He realizes that meaning broke down in this search for an unexplained past, and in the end all he had been doing was running around in circles in a search for the role he was supposed to play. He learns to abandon using the personal and the individual in favor of the universal that he acknowledges he cannot explain, that he can only feel and express through his dance. At the end of the story, Yoshiya remembers consoling a dying Mr. Tabata and confessing his lustful attraction to his mother and realizes the universal gesture people make in reaching for meaning:
Our hearts are not stones. A stone may disintegrate in time and lose its outward form. But hearts never disintegrate. They have no outward form, and whether good or evil, we can always communicate them to one another (Murakami 68).

Reused in the fourth story in the collection, the symbolism of the stone signies stagnancy, a thing resistant to change despite its frailty in respect to time. This story answers the feelings of emptiness felt in the previous two by surrendering the need

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predict the future or to dene the past: Yoshiya does not know what it means to be a son of God, but as he states at the end, he is satised by the non-conclusive fact that all Gods children can dance (Murakami 68), signifying the conscious turn from the self as individual to the self as universal as a means of forming meaning. The fourth story, Thailand, follows a menopausal physician, Satsuki, as she takes a vacation in Thailand, and ponders the possible death of her ex-husband in the Kobe earthquake. Throughout her stay at a resort, listening to jazz music and swimming in a private pool, Satsuki ponders the state of her life at her age, expresses hatred for her ex-husband, believing that he robbed her chances at motherhood, and dreaming he has died. As the ideal guide, her kindly old driver Nimit brings Satsuki to a rural village to see an old fortunetelling woman, who tells her she has been living with a stone inside her body. He tells her that she will dream of a large snake that she must allow to eat the stone in order to release the dread of death that is plaguing her life, and informs her that her ex-husband is still alive. After hearing this, Satsuki has a revelatory dream:
She recognized she was headed toward deathShe thought about the child to which she never gave birth. She had destroyed that child, ung it down a bottomless well. And then she had spent thirty years hating one man. She had hoped that he would die in agony. In order to bring that about, she had gone so far as to wish in the depths of her heart for an earthquakeLiving and dying are, in a sense, of equal value (Murakami 87).

After hearing that Nimit, whom Satsuki muses may have been in a homosexual relationship with his employer, thinks of himself as already half-dead, Satsuki feels a reconciliatory sense of calm as she accepts aging and returning to Japan as two major inevitabilities in her life. Thailand introduces the idea of the transitory state, the thought process where one attempts to nd ones bearings between life and death, as they relate to disaster. The

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t xransitory state, the in-between from one place to another, is an inevitable step to forming meaning, as disaster is the thing that cannot be fully communicated, the thing that disrupts the present as it compels thoughts of the unreachable past and future, therefore leaving a need to reestablish ones self in another place. Blanchot describes the pull between contradictions of a transitory state as such:
Between thinking and dying there is a sort of downward ascendance: the more we think in the absence of any (determined) thought, the more we rise, step by step, toward the precipice, the sheer fall, headlong (Blanchot 39-40).

The contradiction of downward ascendance represents the transitory state as one where, when thinking about death, a person is pulled upwards towards a destined plateau that will lead to death eventually. Satsukis realization of her path towards death leads her to conclusions about her own hand in robbing herself of motherhood and the destructive desires she holds while hating her ex-husband, desires that led her to wish for disasterall of which manifest the stone inside her that must be eaten by a large snake. Nimit tells her, in order to have her dream, she must cast off mere words. Words turn into stones (Murakami 88). Regardless of which route Satsuki choosesto release or maintain her animosityshe is ultimately headed for death. But, by choosing to release her animosity and accept her mortality, she is able to live in the present, able to y back to Japan with a new reconciliation with life. Satsuki casts off words, able to exist in the absence of any preconceived or determined thought, as she thinks, Let me sleepJust let me sleep. And wait for the dream to come (Murakami 90). Thailand represents how the transitory state that ensues from encountering disaster calls for a surrendering of determined thought in the process of forming meaning, of allowing the dream to come and release the stones within ones self. The fth story, Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, is the one exceptionally fantastic story in the collection as it follows Katagiri, an ordinary collections ofcer, as he is approached by a giant talking frog (who simply calls himself Frog) who requests his assistance in

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stopping an imminent earthquake threatening Tokyo. Katagiri is bewildered upon seeing a giant frog in his apartment, but Frogs eloquent manner of speech, philosophical rhetoric (quoting numerous times from the likes of Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy), and efcient resolution of Katagiris work problems convince him to accept the supernatural. Frog says that Worm, a sleeping-giant underground creature provoked by the Kobe earthquake and its absorption of various forms of societys hatred, will cause the earthquake, and that he needs Katagiris moral support to assuage his fear quoting Nietzsche in saying the highest wisdom is to have no fear (Murakami 100). When asked why he would choose the ordinary Katagiri, Frog replies that he holds the utmost respect for his tacitly diligent attitudes towards his work and family, arguing that, Because, Mr. Katagiri, Tokyo can only be saved by a person like you. And its for people like you that Im trying to save Tokyo (Murakami 104). Katagiri agrees, but is shot right before their agreed meeting time and is sent to the hospital. However, upon waking, Katagiri nds no evidence of being shot and gets a visit from an exhausted Frog, who thanks him for his support in stopping the earthquake and subduing (but not killing) Worm, which he says took place in the imagination. Pained by his injuries, Frog falls asleep, but his body twitches until it explodes from the effect of millions of insects escaping his carcass. Katagiri screams, but nds himself waking yet another time with Frog having disappeared, but feels reassured that Frog had saved Tokyo, though he had sacriced his life and no one would know what he did. Super-Frog Saves Tokyo is precisely the kind of dream where all kinds of semantics collide in order to form meaning, employing imaginative stretches that characterize the dreams Satsuki and Junko would fall asleep to. The disaster of the Kobe earthquake replays itself in the imminence of a Tokyo earthquake, forcing another confrontation with the fragile condition of the intensive collectivity known as city (Murakami 95). The prevailing style of magical realism plainly accepts every extraordinary detail as rational, and by doing so in this story, straties the reality of the world and suspends all connections of meaning. Within this suspension, echoes of the previous stories speak

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out, particularly with the Super-Frog Yoshiya and his feeling of the rhythm of the earth and with Satsukis dream requirement. Super Frog Saves Tokyo presents the hypothetical chance to extract meaning from a repetition of the disaster, offering a supplementary experience to the thing that cannot be fully experienced. As Blanchot writes, the disaster itself is the thing that obliterates the experience of it:
The disaster is the time when one can no longerby desire, ruse, or violencerisk the life which one seeks, through this risk, to prolong. It is the time when the negative falls silent and when in place of men comes the innite calm (the effervescence) which does not embody itself or make itself intelligible (Blanchot 40).

In avoiding a direct representation of the disaster, which consists of the unintelligible innite calm, the fantastical representation of a subsequent disaster allows for a chance of intelligibility by evoking an imagination that encompasses a hypothetical denition of the previous disaster. As Frog argues, this imagination enhances the consciousness in which one can dene the self:
It is [in the imagination] that we experience our victories and our defeats. Each and every one of us is a being of limited duration: all of us eventually go down to defeat. But as Ernest Hemingway saw so clearly, the ultimate value of our lives is decided not by how we win but by how we lose (Murakami 110).

Because the battles and disasters in this story occur in the imagination, there is the necessary distance from the self and reality that allows for a more objective formation of meaning in respect to disaster. The story strives to create this objectivity through the multiple references to literature. More so than in Landscape with Flatiron, texts ood out of this story as Frog quotes numerous literary voicesmost prominent is Tolstoys
Anna Karenina as Frog humorously likens his chances of defeating Worm to Anna

Kareninas chances of beating the train she throws herself under. Anna Karenina stands as a signicant text within the text, acting as a symbol of fatalistic death stemming

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from the inevitable web of circumstances built from the self. As Frog is suffering from his wounds, he muses about the self within him that is sending him towards death:
I am, indeed, pure Frog, but at the same time I am a thing that stands for a world of un- FrogWhat you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside of me. Inside me is the un-me. My brain is growing muddy. The locomotive is coming (Murakami 111-112).

The dichotomy Frog muses about between me and un-me speaks to the dilemma of identity caused by the threat of disaster and the locomotive as the inevitable result of an overwhelming burden of circumstances. This dichotomy is parallel to the one between real and fantastic and the one between ordinary and extraordinary: characters like Komura, Yoshiya, Satsuki and Katagiri are all conicted by contradictions between the perception of self as real and ordinary and their circumstances as fantastic and extraordinary. As a result, all of the characters in the collection are growing muddy, their sense of meanings growing unclear. But as Blanchot says throughout his book, disaster is the muddy thing, the thing that dees distinctions between past, present, future and experience. Magical realism, then, is the style that narrates the world and its characters as muddy in a synergistic way to how disaster is muddy. Muddiness is the conclusion to all the questions posed in the story, but not in a way that feels abstractly relativist; rather, the conclusion of muddiness actively deemphasizes dichotomies, acknowledging thatthe me and un-me can coexist in the same self. This de-emphasis on dichotomies presents the ordinary Katagiri in a light that makes him a hero, implicating that the ordinary-hero-person combination acts as both necessary resource and motivating reason to save Tokyo. Super-Frog Saves Tokyo presents disaster as the thing that dees meaning, but represents that deance of meaning as the universal mode that constructs reality. As Frog says in address to the issues raised in All Gods Children Can Dance, the nature of human existence is the irony of making meaning only to nd circumstances against it:

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Fyodor Dostoevsky, with unparalleled tenderness, depicted those who have been forsaken by God. He discovered the precious quality of human existence in the ghastly paradox whereby men who had invented God were forsaken by that very God (Murakami 111).

The crises of self caused by meaning-defying presence of disaster from which one constructs reality are demonstrated as containing equalizing universality, as all people are fated to meet the locomotive that Katagiri embraces by the storys end, representing disaster as the thing that exposes what is true at the most basic units of the human condition. The last story, Honey Pie, follows the life of short ction writer Junpei as he deals with the divorce of his two oldest friends, Takatsuki and Sayoko, and struggles with the love he has felt for Sayoko all along. Similar in typicality and ordinariness with the other characters in the collection, Junpei wanders through life as the quietly passive observer, socially awkward, withdrawn into books and writing until he meets Takatsuki, the picture of friendliness and success who also draws Sayoko into their group. Unable to break the comfort between the three and admit his love for Sayoko, Junpei could only abide by Takatsuki as he made his move rst, forcing him to swallow his feelings. In the time of the story, Junpei acts as a friend as Takatsuki and Sayokos relationship quietly falls apart and as a guardian as he assists Sayoko with Sala, easing her nightmares about the earthquake, which manifest as an enigmatic Earthquake Man who carries a small box (a returning image from UFO in Kushiro) and tries to stuff people inside it (a returning fear from Landscape with Flatiron). In the end, Junpei overcomes his hesitation of confessing his love for Sayoko out of a longing to protect both her and Sala. Honey Pie follows the fantastical Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, moving from the spontaneity of dreams and magic-realist adventures into the planned control of writing and telling stories. The stories told in this story take a clear parallel structure as the

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relationship between Junpei and Takatsuki resembles the relationship between the bears Masakichi and Tonkichi. Masakichi is the talented, but strange and socially awkward bear who can talk and count and excels at gathering and selling honey to humans while Tonkichi is the normal bear who excels at catching salmon and trades parts of his haul with Masakichi. Junpei himself is talented, but cannot bring himself to process what Takatsuki tells him about Sayoko having had reciprocal feelings for Junpei the whole time. When Takatsuki drifts away from the story as he leaves Sayoko, so does Tonkichi as all the salmon in the river suddenly decide to avoid that river, resulting in his capture and incorporation into a zoo as he clumsily hunts on the mountain, having refused Masakichis generosity of free honey on the basis of fairness. Sayoko references the story when Junpei nally expresses his love, telling him, We should have been like this to begin withyou just didnt get it. Not until the salmon disappeared from the river (Murakami 144). The way that stories draw clear parallels to the meanings of relationships distinguishes Honey Pie from the others in after the quake as it illustrates a declarative power within the protagonist to write stories and make meanings that apply aptly to their reality. As an allegory, Murakamis description of Junpeis writing style focuses on ones concentration over a period of timeJunpei can handle short periods of writing, but not longer periods, suggesting his inability to see the bigger picture of things, an inability shown in his interactions with both Takatsuki and Sayoko. However, unlike Super-Frog Saves Tokyo which relies on the discourse of various texts to form meanings within the stratied reality, Honey Pie relies on the gesture and motivation of writing, of giving expression to aspects of life. The privilege of writing is an empowering resource in confronting all the issues in the previous stories, allowing one the simple hopefulness in the possibility of positive change. Sala nds Tonkichis fate in the zoo an unsatisfying end, pleading to Junpei to rewrite a happier ending. After Sala goes to sleep, Sayoko and Junpei share a tender moment that nally convinces Junpei to express his love however, Sala wakes up in a daze, walks into the room and says that the

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Earthquake Man appeared, telling her to send the message that the small box, lid open, is ready for everybody. Junpei, after Sala climbs into bed with him and Sayoko, thinks about the nature of his friendships and the possibility of love before him and then realizes the perfect re-write for Tonkichis story, ending instead with Tonkichis discovery of his ability to turn Masakichis honey into delicious honey pies, which sell well and are able to support his happily-ever-after ending. Honey Pie ends with Junpeis assurance that Sala and Sayoko will love the rewrite and his declaration of intent in both his writing and future relationships with Sayoko and Sala:
I want to write stories that are different from the ones Ive written so far, Junpei thought: I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love. But right now I have to stay here and keep watch over this woman and this girl. I will never let anyonenot anyone try to put them into that crazy boxnot even if the sky should fall or the earth crack open with a roar (Murakami 147).

By participating in writing, Junpei is able to rewrite both the story of the bears and his own, allowing him to end up with the woman he has loved all along. This ability to rewrite stories is the vehicle that carries the hope of forming meaning with the reality of disaster by rooting itself in the universality of the human desire for love. The enigmatic gure of the Earthquake Man remains unresolved as Worm is in Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, but the story takes into account the inevitability of conict by declaring the resolve of preventative attitudes to protect anyone from being put into that crazy box. The negative of Junpeis statement (I will never) is worked against the neutral of simply experiencing stories instead of writing them, supporting the positive afrmative of his resolve. In Honey Pie, disaster becomes the object of writing in an afrmative turn towards the possibility of change, forming meaning in the face of doubt with ones resolution rooted in emotional universality.

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Through the collection after the quake, Murakami enacts the very thing Junpei strives for, writing stories different from the ones he has been used to as he attempts to capture aspects of the human condition within the experience of disaster, a thing that he did not experience and, by nature, simply cannot be fully communicated. Murakami successfully avoids stufng any of his characters into the small box that appeared in UFO in Kushiro and gets pushed aside in Honey Pie by carefully contextualizing them in meaning-fragmented worlds affected by disaster. With the prevailing narrative style of magical realism, meaning and the distinctions between the real and the magical are delineated, allowing the characters to sift through meanings at their most basic unit and to construct their responses to the effects of disaster from the bottom-up as objectively as possible. In the steady quest to form meaning, characters are brought along a path of various confrontations with the self in respect to the unknown (UFO in Kushiro), to emptiness (Landscape with Flatiron), to the inarticulate past (All Gods Children Can Dance), to the futures of life and death (Thailand), to the universal (SuperFrog Saves Tokyo) and nally to the ability to affect change (Honey Pie). Disaster problematizes the assurance the one can rely on meanings formed, but as Blanchot argues, that disaster is the thing that cannot be reached, only felt; the characters nd that they can only rely on what they feel, on what they perceive as the certain truths of the human condition, from the feeling that we are always beginning to our hearts not being made of stone to the universal eventuality of the arrival of the Anna Karenina locomotive. Even though disaster is the thing that cannot be dened or fully experienced,
after the quake demonstrates how the gesture and attempt to express ones self to

others carries substance in the process of meaning-making by illustrating its gradual move from the individual to the universal perspective. Blanchots nal arguments about disaster include an imperative: Let us share eternity in order to make it transitory (Blanchot 146). As the story-progression of after the quake shows, the gesture of communication and expression, despite the inability to know disaster and the profound pain in inicts on ones internal state, is the key to forming satisfying meaning.

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REFERENCES Blanchot, Maurice. The Writing of the Disaster. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1995. Bowers, Maggie Ann. Magic(al) Realism. New York: Routledge. 2004. Chanady, Amaryll. Magical Realism and the Fantastic: Resolved Versus Unresolved Antinomy. New York: Garland. 1985. Faris, Wendy B. Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystication of Narrative. Nashville: Vanderbilt Press. 2004. Murakami, Haruki. after the quake. New York: Vintage. 2002. Rubin, Jay. Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words. London: Harvill Press. 2002. Suter, Rebecca. The Japanization of Modernity: Murakami Haruki between Japan and the
United States. Boston: Harvard East Asian Monographs. 2008.

ENDNOTE
1 URL

<http://www.georesources.co.uk/kobehigh.htm>

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A ULYSSES Carol: Reconciling the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future
JENNIFER SOMMERFELD
Department of English Professor Katie Fleming

Any being who has complete knowledge of conditions and the laws that guide them would, in effect, have already experienced the fullness of time and would know the outcome but would not be predicting it. That is, the story would already be writ. David Bloch

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This quote, from David Blochs essay Aristotle on Memory and Reconciliation, expresses the ever-present tension between the past and present in James Joyces
Ulysses. The novel is famous not just for being considered the most well crafted novel

in the English language, but for Joyces parallel use of The Odyssey in composing the story as well. The story of Ulysses reects this sense of futility in the face of ones history, but also the struggle of the artist, Stephen Dedalus, against this ominous force. Through Stephens battle with the forces of time, as well as overarching themes of historys inuence in everyday life, Ulysses explores the ways in which history both helps, and hinders, creative development. While the terms history and memory seem at rst to be inextricably linked to the point of being identical terms, the text of Ulysses quickly sets out to distinguish between the two. Foremost, we have Stephen Dedalus, the history tutor who is a self-professed hater of history as he tells Deasy directly, Historyis a nightmare from which I am trying to awake (Joyce 34). But we could have guessed as much without Stephen putting it in such blatant terms. Indeed, throughout much of the lesson he appears bored with his own subject to the extent of joking along with a pupil for his inability to recall specic historical details. Perhaps more poignant, however, is the stark contrast between Stephen and Deasys view of history. The headmaster is made out to be a self-assured know-it-all, exhausting Stephen with his opinions on life and the like. When Stephen nally lets slip a bit of his disdain for Deasys rambling, professing his hate for the subject of history, Deasy replies, The ways of the Creator are not our waysall history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God (Joyce 34). This ties into when earlier in the novel, we learn of Stephens troubled relationship with his religious upbringing, which has had such a profound inuence that he is haunted by the ghost of his mother for refusing to pray for her at her deathbed. Consequently, Deasys connection to this entity renders him, and in effect history, as an oppressive force.

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Furthermore, Deasys rather simplistic view on both life and politics represents one of the core values with which Stephen struggles. As Robert Spoo suggests in James Joyce
and the Language of History, Deasy embodies what Nietzsche called the malady

of history, the burdensome dependence on the past which he feared was sapping intellectual and moral vitality in the nineteenth century (Spoo 91). In employing such a narrow explanation for the purpose of lifethat regardless of ones decisions, everyone diesDeasy renders any possible action in the present futile. It is this very battle between action and futility that Stephen internally debates as an artist, as well as one of which we will see much more in the following chapter, Proteus. James Joyce himself offered his own denition of history and its manifestation in literature. He considered poetry to be:
At war with its age, so it makes no account of history, which is fabled by the daughters of memoryNo doubt they are only men of letters who insist on the succession of ages [;] and history or the denial of reality, for they are two names for one thing, may be said to be that which deceives the whole world. (Spoo 67)

Joyce views history as something that negates the present, which in turn contributes to stagnancy and lack of creation. Not only does this draw a striking parallel to Stephens stance on the issue, but we also perceive the beginning of a distinction by Joyce between history and memory. The term used to depict history as fabled by the daughters of memory suggests a close relationship between the two, but with memory serving as a nostalgic version of the past, not remaining rooted in history but occupying the present as well. This distinction is made even clearer in a passage from the chapter Scylla and Charybdis:
Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our mind into contact with the eternal wisdom, Platos world of ideas. (Joyce 177)

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This statement, which Stephen makes to his friends as they discuss art in all forms, closely resembles the idea of history in the fact that his concept of art deals with the past. However Stephen believes that this spiritual essence must transcend time and boundariesit must be eternal wisdom. Unlike Stephens nightmarish perception of history, this piece of the past as represented in art is creative and dynamic, following along the same lines as the Aristotelian distinction between history and memory with the latter being dened as in the present but of the past (Bloch 58). It comes as no coincidence, then, that Stephen frequently alludes to the Aristotelian school of thought as he wanders throughout the day, carrying out his inner turmoil of realizing his full potential as an artist. There is a working polarity between history, which is stagnant and negates the possibility of action in the present, and memory as something that references the past, but creates rather than stagnates. The qualifying factor of art springing forth suggests the necessity of a rich background of memory in order to create. As an artist, Stephen is very much rooted in the past, as he wanders along the beach in Proteus, history practically overcomes his senses, appearing before him in the form of visions of ancient Irish feasting upon beached whales and warriors charging down the beach on horsebackbut is similarly searching for a new means of expression that is free from such specters. Just as the rst half establishes Stephens profound knowledge of the past and present, it also serves to blur the line between memory and history. After all, history is but a function of memory, and vice versa. For example, in Scylla and Charybdis, Stephen ruminates,
In the intense instant of imagination, when the mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal that which I was is that which I am and that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but by reection from that which then I shall be. (Joyce 187)

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In other words, this act of intense remembering relies heavily on the past in order to perceive the present and foresee the future. Even Joyces style, where the words accelerate after the other, suggests an endless, owing cycle of the past into the future and so on and so forth. The memory of Stephens former self is what allows him to construct his present and future self, which causes one to once again question the line between history and memory, and how one might strike a balance. In Stephens Lyrical
Language: Memory and Imagination in Ulysses, Justin Beplate states that

[Stephens] language betrays a hyper-conscious awareness of past forms pressing upon present-tense modes of expression, habitually repressing potential innovation before it has time to arise. This is the negative mode of remembering conceived in terms of habitual replication: the creative and independent spirit, burdened with an overfull memory is crushed by the weight of an authorized past. (Beplate 44) This passage appears to condemn Stephens highly educated mind. As someone who is much learned in the past, it seems an impossible feat to forget such knowledge for the sake of creative progress. Stephen has condemned himself by acquiring such knowledge and, according to this passage; the artist has killed his creative potential in preparation to become an artist. We see a hint of this sentiment in Proteus later in the chapter at a point where his history, Stephens memory and present state of mind have ooded together into one: God becomes man becomes sh becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a ruinous offal from all dead (Joyce 49). Again, the style employed here reects a waterfall-like cycle where one object runs into another continuously. Stephens sharply bitter tone suggests a sudden loathing for his position as an artist, now at the mercy of his memory which has become overfull with dead breaths and ruinous offal from all dead.

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These chain-of-life visions likewise reect Stephens earlier discussion with Deasy in which the headmaster reinforced his own belief that everything in life is progressing towards one goal: God. This is not only a core Christian belief, but is described as theological teleos. Robert Spoo reinforces the idea that as an author, Joyce was an enemy of teleological history. However, Spoo also states teleology is common to the Novel and to narrated History (Spoo 66). If we accept both forms as a way of telling a story, then we can see how this idea of teleos manifests itself in storytelling. David Bloch gives the example of an author composing a story without any strong sense of direction and yet, when they arrive at the ending they look back on the story and claim to see that every line they wrote was directed toward the purpose of the storys ending, even though originally it was completely random thoughts. He goes on to state, Literary theory benets from the study of Teleology for we nd that many genres are directional phenomena, and a genres universality may have less to do with tness selection than with other constraints (Bloch). What he describes is the tendency of novels of a similar genre to t a particular mold in terms of storytelling. James Joyces novel famously takes on one of the original literary formsthat of the Greek epic. He sets out to replicate the storyline in terms of the everyday. T S Eliot created a label for such a method: Mythical Model. He comes up with this term in his review on Ulysses, titled Ulysses, Order and
Myth, which includes a close critique of other published reviews of the novel. This is the

ultimate expression of the battle between memory and history. For, in using one of the most well known stories in the history of literature, Joyce runs the risk of falling prey to his own self-professed fear of history stiing and suppressing creativity. Above all else, the fact that Joyce uses the story of The Odyssey to order his own plot suggests that he is dangerously close to defying his own logic. Beplate writes:
While memory was the one faculty Joyce prized above all others, the vast machinery of personal and cultural memory mobilized in his writing is also cross-hatched by an acute awareness of the potentially oppressive function of remembering. (Beplate 42)

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One would think that the very act of attempting to adapt an epic storyline to modern story would only prove to be one such oppressive function. However there is a very ne line between memory and history, and wonder whether the same applies to the formal equation of a novel, especially when employed by one of the literary greats. Eliot credits this form as a way of giving shape and signicance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history (Eliot 177). On the one hand, Eliots statement entails that modern existence is so overcome by historical ordering that mankind is futile in creating art. At the same time Eliots remedy is to employ another kind of ordering, or teleographic method, to liberate expression. Images and terms repeat themselves throughout the novel, such as the gure of Hamlet and the ghost of Stephens mother. The most striking example comes towards the end, in the chapter entitled Eumaeus:
As they walked, they at times stopped and walked again, continuing their tete a tete (which of course he was utterly out of) about sirens, enemies of mans reason, mingled with a number of other topics of the same category, usurpers, historical cases of the kind while the man in the sweeper car or you might as well call it in the sleeper car who in any case couldnt possibly hear because they were too far simply sat in his seat near the end of lower Gardiner street and looked after their lowbacked car. (Joyce 618)

Mingled within these lines are key words from previous chapters in the novel. For instance, both men experienced a form of usurpation earlier in the novelBloom was usurped form his bed by the gradual buildup to Mollys affair with Boylan, and Stephen was also usurped from his bedroom by his friend Buck Mulligan and Haines. Sirens references an earlier chapter of the same name. Even the play on words such as sweeper transforming to sleeper mimics Joyces tendency to reuse words and images throughout, but often employing a unique twist on them so that they are not quite the same as they were in the beginning.

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Before one can pass judgment on the efcacy of James Joyces model for Ulysses, and gauge whether or not he practiced what he preached, so to speak, we must examine the nal passage of the novel. We end with what may be one of the longest run-on sentences in literary history, following the inner monologue of Molly as she lay silently in bed with Bloom after the long, toilsome day. In it, she recounts previous affairs with other men, reects on her relationship with Bloom and her children both alive and deceased. It is not certain whether Molly has ended her interior monologue by the end of the novel or if she is cut off, but the closing passage contains her memory of Blooms marriage proposal: I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes (Joyce 732). While this last line strikes a rather optimistic note, the reader cannot be sure of what this implies for the future of the Bloom couple. And it is in this sense that the novel breaks free from the teleological mold of the epicbreaks free from the oppressive force of history. In all of its ambiguity and reimagining of previous events, thoughts and actions, it renders an entirely new novel that expresses the modern day burden of reconciling the past with the present and creating something better for tomorrow.

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REFERENCES Beplate, Justin. Stephens Lyrical Language: Memory and Imagination in Ulysses. tudes Anglaises Jan.-Mar. 2007: 42-54. Bloch, David. Philosophia Antiqua, Volume 110: Aristotle on Memory and Reconciliation: Text, Translation, Interpretation, and Reception in Western Scholasticism. Brill Academic Publishers, 2007. Eliot, T.S. Ulysses, Order, and Myth. The Dial Nov. 1923. Joyce, James. Ulysses. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Spoo, Robert. James Joyce and the Language of History: Dedaluss Nightmare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

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Oscillations of Race and Memory: The Strained Path to A More Perfect Union
TIFFANY YANG
Department of Comparative Literature Professor Roberto Diaz

All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

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On March 18, 2008, Barack Obamathen in the running for the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nominationmade an audacious decision. He addressed the country and insightfully discussed a topic politicians frequently allude to but rarely explain or examine. For the rst time in the history of contemporary political discourse, a presidential candidate spoke frankly about race. The speech was originally written in response to the controversial remarks made by Obamas former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr.,1 but Obama used this platform to engage an even larger sociopolitical discourse and highlight the underlying issues: racial tensions and inequality. It was a risk that could have jeopardized both his presidential candidacy and his political legitimacy. However, as both praise and condemnation quickly saturated media outlets and political discussions, Obamas speech on race was widely recognized not only as a political gambit but also as an important and bold step for advancing the countrys conversations about race. For some, however, his speech was a disappointment. Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, said that it was an enormous missed opportunity to really assert as a very articulate and capable African-American leader how damaging Wrights expressions of hatred and animosity are to the African-American community itself (Lakshmanan). Dean Barnett of the conservative journal The Weekly Standard dened the discourse as a non-sequitur on race relations. Houston A. Baker Jr., a Professor of African-American literature at Vanderbilt University whose most recent publication is entitled, Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideal of the Civil Rights Era, went so far as to call it a bizarre moment of mimicry, aping Martin Luther King Jr[it] was a pandering disaster that threw, once again, his pastor under the bus. Some criticized the speech by rejecting it altogether, shunning Obamas rallying call for a higher discussion of race. Conservative New York Times columnist Bill Kristol, for example, wrote, The last thing we need now is a heated national conversation about race . . . they tend to be pointless and result-less.

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From amidst the overwhelming coverage, however, one point of consensus was clear: the speech was a triumph because of its complexity and its honesty. Frank Rich of The New
York Times wrote:
I share the general view that Mr. Obamas speech is the most remarkable utterance on the subject by a public gure in modern memory. But what impressed me most was not Mr. Obamas rhetorical elegance or his nuanced view of both Americas undeniable racial divide and equally undeniable racial progress. The real novelty was to nd a politician who didnt talk down to his audience but instead trusted it to listen to complete, paragraph-long thoughts that couldnt be reduced to sound bites. In a political culture when even campaign debates can resemble Jeopardy, this is tantamount to revolution.

Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan echoes this sentiment in The Wall
Street Journal, writing, I thought Barack Obamas speech was strong, thoughtful

and important. Rather beautifully, it was a speech to think to, not clap to. It was clear thats what he wanted, and this is rare. She further asserts that this speech avoided the lowest-common-denominator thinking, based on dizzy polling, [which] has long degraded American discourse and that it may in fact have a benecial impact on current rhetoric. But perhaps Jon Stewart of The Daily Show said it best when he declared, And so at 11 oclock a.m., on a Tuesday, a prominent politician spoke to Americans as though they were adults. While the speechs honesty concerning this sensitive issue has elicited much welldeserved acclaim, it may be the speechs intellectual and sophisticated tone which will be eulogized as the rhetorical apex of Obamas contributions to political discourse. Even Noonan concedes that regardless of its effect on the campaign, Obamas race speech is a contribution to societys political conversation simply through its articulation. The speech assumed the audience was intelligent, Noonan comments. This was a

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compliment, and I suspect it was received as a gift. Noonan echoes what many others have already noted; Obama addresses his listeners in a manner most unusual for the modern politician. He envisions his public to be educated or, at the very least, capable of analytic and deductive thought. Obamas opinion seems especially revolutionary in light of the words linguistic pedigree. Public once referred only to the adult, educated portion of a society. In the 1540s, this started to change when public began to be used as an adjective to imply that something was open to all [in] the community. In the 1610s, a new denition was born when public came to mean the community. In direct contrast to the esoteric lineage of the public, the phrase the people rst meant the common people, the masses, as distinguished from nobility. Since its initial use, the phrase has shed its somewhat insolent connotation to simply mean a body of persons in general. Nowadays, public and people are synonymous in a contemporary convergence of meaning, a particularly interesting phenomenon given the words divergent geneses. Obamas perspective on the public and the people reects the tumultuous history of these words. Through the tone and content of his speech, Obama highlights this rare intersection between common and extraordinary. For Obama, the masses are the educated; the people are the public. Through his speech, a Thinking Mans speech aptly and poetically titled A More Perfect Union, Obama initiates a complex dialogue around memory, racial divisions, and the possibility of change (Noonan). Although the intricacy of his views, the frankness of his rhetoric, and the compelling deliverance of his thoughts are unwavering tenets of his speech, moments of recurrent uncertainty exist. The speech is as awed as the nation it attempts to portray. Unable to choose between two versions of memory, as either a pedagogical tool for learning or a social impediment to progress, Obama is unable to maintain a consistent perspective. His subsequent internal conict undermines his analysis of how a country can best overcome its racially-charged past. He calls for societys liberation from the racial tensions that hinder its progress, but this liberation is impossible without an accompanying stance on the role of memory. A nation cannot move forward when it does not know how to view its past.

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Obamas speech on race is powerful because of its relevance to its time. Yet, when analyzed in relation to a collection of outside texts, the speechs truly radiant character and subtle contradictions are revealed. The culmination of an intellectual exchange between Obamas discourse and other perspectives on memory and race, the speech was heavily inuenced by others perspectives; its inherent hesitations and contradictions are reective of these diverse inuences. Within the context of key fragments from the works of Jos Mart, Miguel de Unamuno, and William Faulkner, the speechs rhetorical undercurrent of the United States racially-charged past swells into a more profound discussion of the ambiguity of memory and the tension of racial depictions. Although seemingly irrelevant to each other, Marts Nuestra Amrica, Unamunos En torno al
casticismo and Faulkners Requiem for a Nun collectively dance an analytic dance with

the rhetoric and content of Obamas speech. It is a dance which ultimately exposes the subtle yet denitive aws of A More Perfect Union. Jos Mart, who dedicated much of his life to the ght for Cuban independence from Spain, wrote his essay Nuestra Amrica (1892) in hopes of inspire peoples perseverance in the Cuban struggle for liberty. Before dying in military action during the Cuban War of Independence against Spain, Mart was a prominent gure in both Latin American literature and the Cuban movement for independence. He was a poet, essayist, journalist, revolutionary, philosopher, lawyer and political theorist; like Obama, he transcended the divisions between different professions and united the platforms of literature, philosophy and politics to dictate his thoughts and passions. He was a celebrated orator, delivering poetically powerful political speeches in ways reminiscent of Obamas praised rhetoric. Because of his dedication to Cuba and its independence, Mart has frequently been considered a martyr, the apostle for Cuban independence or even a liberator (Sierra). Throughout his lifetime, Mart was an unyielding critic of racism since Cuba, like the United States, struggled with the divisive issue of race. Jos Mart remains an inuential gure to this day. His essay, Nuestra Amrica, provides an interesting perspective on the contemporary conicts over race. Nuestra Amrica

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touches on the essential role of memory and history in a collective conscience, but it focuses primarily on the more relevant question of how to address the racial divisions inherent in Cubas struggle for independence. Particularly in Nuestra Amrica, Mart relies on a discourse of cultural union and progress to illustrate a racial ideal, a universality that supercedes division. Ultimately, the interaction between Marts discussion and Obamas analysis of race highlights the counter-productive and even contradictory nature of Obamas speech. Although not as directly relevant to Obamas focus on race, the texts of William Faulkner and Miguel de Unamuno nevertheless provide a more profound perspective on memory and history, two concepts that serve as paramount backdrops to Obamas discussion of race. Miguel de Unamuno, a Spanish intellectual immersed in the national crisis of a crumbling empire, struggled with questions of how and why Spain had arrived at such a devastating moment. The losses of the colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines prompted artists and intellectuals alike, a group recognized collectively as the Generation of 98, to generate new currents of thought. They critiqued established literary, social and educational institutions that reected what they denounced as ignorance, conformity and the absence of a true national spirit; ultimately, this group of novelists, poets, essayists and philosophers opened a dialogue around the redenition of national identity in a moment of crisis. In his collection of essays En torno al casticismo (1895), Unamuno reects upon this question of redenition. He indirectly rejects memory, instead favoring constant contemporary movement, and introduces a new theoretical framework for viewing the past: intrahistoria.2 Viewed through the lens of Unamunos essays, Obamas speech becomes a discussion of the conict between memory and progress and how this conict can immure a person in persistent hesitation. With his words paraphrased in A More Perfect Union, William Faulkner is an American writer who, like Unamuno, introduces another temporal aspect to Obamas speech. A prolic writer who captured the spirit and simultaneous decay and endurance of the

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American South, Faulkner also understood the deep-rooted conict between memory and progress in relation to overcoming racism. By paraphrasing a celebrated line from Faulkners part-novel, part-play Requiem for a Nun (1951) in his speech, Obama welcomes an intellectual interplay between his own words and Faulkners literary reections on race. It is an intellectual exchange that ultimately highlights Obamas own ambiguous perspective on memory and time. Through an individual analysis of each of these texts in isolation from the larger context of each writers literary corpus,3 it is easy to see a dialogue of redenition in the recurring themes of memory and race. It is true that Obamas context is unique. He spoke as a presidential candidate, a position that undoubtedly warrants some restriction of selfexpression, and the form of his text fundamentally differs from those of the political writings of Mart and Unamuno or the ction of Faulkner. It was written as a speech, as an oral declaration that communicates a set of ideas and principles through words and gestures. It is a communicative form that diverges sharply from the norms of an essay, a written text that is meant above all to attempt, to rehearse, to speculate and to analyze through a labored literary effort. Nevertheless, Obamas speech may be political in context but it is essentially literary. He speaks in long, complex sentences that resound as paragraphs rather than sound bites. He evokes a literary allusion in order to introduce an important element of his speech. He analyzes the ambiguity of time and racial conict, an analysis that is undeniably literary in its complexity. After all, what is the study of literature if not the study of the ambiguity of language? The Constitution, a central concept in Obamas speech, can also be seen as a piece of literature. The uncertainty of its meaning warrants close reading and interpretation, a function performed primarily by the Supreme Court. In these ways, Obamas speech is both a political discourse and a literary declaration, a speech that can and should be analyzed in the context of other literary forms. What connects these writers, what connects these texts, is also an underlying hope of purpose: to inspire discussion and to redene ideas. These texts forge bold new

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perspectives on a collectives identity and conscience in the struggle for progress whether that collective be one nation or a group of nations. This struggle necessarily leads to two inquiries that Obamas A More Perfect Union attempts to answer. Firstly, what is the role of memory, and history, in a collective conscience? Secondly, how should someone perceive of race within this context, and how does he or she advance towards a greater ideal? Viewed through the lens of Unamunos and Marts aforementioned essays, Obamas speech can be seen for what it offers and what it denies; through these discussions around memory and race, the reader or the listener is better able to navigate between the resplendent boldness and the unfortunate contradictions inherent in Obamas A More Perfect Union.
OBAMAS CONSTITUTION

At the foundation of each text lies a principal concept central to the narrative as a whole and essential to the contextualization of all subsequent arguments. For Obama, this concept is mired in the tension of a dichotomous Constitution, a document that is both limitless and imperfectly limited. His narrative and arguments are based upon the ideals of the Constitution, a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time (Obama). Obama views the Constitution as a foundation of promises already made, as proof of ideals already accepted, yet he simultaneously continues to emphasize the gaps that exist between these ideals and the contemporary burdens of reality. It was a document signed but ultimately unnished; yet, what exactly remains unnished? Is it the ideals at its very core, or the promise of these ideals? Obama describes the Constitution as already answering even our most fundamental questions about race and slavery, but laments the gap between the promises of our ideals and the reality of their time (Obama). Filled with the ideals and promises from which the country was born, the Constitution is praised for its ideal promises and condemned for remaining unnished (Obama). The union could be and should be perfected but it will be difcult to do without

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the guidance of an ideal Constitution. How can this document represent the ideal end to which the union should evolve if it is itself unnished, awed, and incomplete? Obamas Constitution simultaneously represents ideal origins and awed incompletion, and his speech is replete with the tension and contradictions that spring from this original uneasy stance. This unstable concept of Obamas Constitution thus oscillates between two extremes: rigidity and evolution. These two extremes are perfectly reected in the contrasting central metaphors of Unamuno and Marts essays. For Mart, one metaphoric core of his essay is the earth itself. He writes in Nuestra merica that la tierra unites the people; it is the metaphorical origin of society, culture, identity and love. It is not a passive possession indicative of power or wealth; it is power itself. Mart writes that the earth of all people pulsates like la plata en las races de los Andes4 (18). In other words, even blood itself is born from the earth. Mart analyzes the connections between the earth and mankinds corporal existence, between the earth and government. He even makes divine connections between the earth and mans very soul, writing, Los que no tienen fe en su tierra son hombres de siete meses. Porque les falta el valor a ellos, se lo niegan a los dems5 (18). Mart expresses his belief that a man should have faith in the earth to nd personal worth and the meaning for his own soul, as if la tierra somehow functions as the divine guide on mans spiritual journey. He also makes familial and bodily ties between man and earth; la tierra is la madre enferma, the diseased and frail mother who must now be taken care of after having raised and nursed her offspring. The Mother is always a symbol of life, of that which carries, bears and then nurses the living. La
tierra is this Mother, albeit a diseased, crippled, unappreciated and forgotten one.

This is the forgotten but irrevocable umbilical chord: an undeniable connection between the earth and its people. Mankind as a people, as a community, or as a country, is not born from each other but from la tierra. Even government, a theoretically manmade creation, comes from and is nourished by this natural element. Mart explains:

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el gobierno ha de nacer del pas. El espritu del gobierno ha de ser el del pas el gobierno no es ms que el equilibrio de los elementos naturales del pas6 (19). The government, the social and political structure of a community, depends upon and cannot exist separately from Nature, from la tierra; like the hombre natural,7 Marts ideal citizen, a societys ideals and identity itself is based upon natural elements that, above all, represent an uncorrupted culture and heritage. We have again this idea of birth, an idea we have seen again and again. La tierra is spiritual birth; it is literal birth. It is a fundamental aspect which bears the soul, the people and its structure of living. By continuing to dene aspects of his essay against la tierra, however, Mart implies a limitation to his argument and perspective. Land has nite boundaries and is rigidly self-contained. The end of land is the end of that entitys supposed dominion, the metaphorical end to that entitys culture and identity; it is the fertility of a birthplace conned to the very roots of this sovereignty. What, then, is the meaning of evolution, the possibilities of growth and transformation, when one is rigidly tied to the limitations of origin? Unamuno, on the other hand, builds his argument around a contrasting concept and metaphor: the sea. Unamuno writes, Las olas de la historia, con su rumor y su espuma que reverbera al sol, ruedan sobre un mar continuo, hondo, inmensamente ms hondo que la capa que ondula sobre un mar silencioso y a cuyo ltimo fondo nunca llega el sol8 (41). It is the profound depths of the sea that undulate and move; the surface, una supercie que se hiela y cristala,9 is only a false reection of the true evolution catalyzing the possibilities for movement and growth. In the same way that Mart concentrates his narrative on the earth, Unamuno utilizes the profundity and currents of water to represent both a nations complexity and the direction in which its progress should ow. He describes Spain as a stagnant body of water while the rest of Europe is a ro, jams extinto,10 the body of water that leads to and nourishes the sea (29). Unamuno is desperate to see this movement reected in Spain. He writes that la tradicin eterna11 is found in el fondo del presente . . . en las entraas del mar,12 in the moving currents

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within an otherwise still body of water. It is not, as others believe, found in the past, which Unamuno likens to ice, static and unmoving, that melts and reverts back to aguas del mar13 only when life is given to the present (43). The sea all at once represents the false superciality of published history, the profound depths of intrahistoria, and the evolutionary progress that Unamuno desires to see in his beloved Spain.
El mar thus functions as a fundamental metaphor in this essay, an integral part of

Unamunos discussion of identity, history, tradition and memory. Tobin A. Siebers in his dissertation about the rst Spanish Avant-Garde movement wrote, Representing the collective, in the group of authors that saw the independence of Cuba in 1898 and the rise of the specter of colonial loss, took on an extraordinary visual and spatial dimension. The literary and philosophical texts of Unamuno . . . turn the landscape into a metaphor for national identity. Unamuno, like the other writers of the Generation of 98, was eager to destroy literary, cultural and intellectual boundaries that would isolate Spain from foreign inuences. He believed Spain had lost its way while other nations were successfully evolving. His emphasis on the sea, on the natural element that surrounds most of the physical borders of Spain, is another allusion to this desire for Spain to gaze outward. The sea represents this possibility of expansion and growth. It is a road as wide as the horizon. As Unamuno describes it, the sea represents movement and vivacity. It is the physical manifestation of limitless opportunity, uid and liberated. Obamas Constitution uctuates between the metaphors of Marts land and Unamunos sea, between the limits of origin and the freedom of motion. On the one hand, the Constitution functions like Marts tierra, as the undeniable roots of a collective, the dried ink on its birth certicate. And yet, when Obama claims it is ultimately unnished, it is more like Unamunos sea. It is capable of change; it is capable of growth. It just is not there yet. Obama thus takes a metaphorical concept that he himself idealizes and then states that these ideals are not yet within the nations grasp. Like Unamuno, Obama criticizes societys momentary stagnation to emphasize an evolution, a transformation,

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waiting to be made. The Constitution thus functions as both the original source of progress and its ideal destination, but how is growth possible when the beginning and the end are the same?
THE ROLE OF MEMORY: LIMITATION OR LIBERATION

Obama, who crafts his narratives around the conict between the limited and the limitless, also discovers this same tension in his analysis of memory. On the one hand, he admits that contemporary problems can only be solved by remembering and learning from the past. To simply wish [African-American anger] away, Obama states, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races. According to Obama, Americans must embrace the burdens of the past without falling victim to it. They must remember it without letting it hinder their progress. But memory is inherently subjective. Each lesson learned will vary across time and space and from person to person because memory is never all-encompassing or impartial. When discussing the possibilities of this great nation, Obama states in his Inaugural Address, Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitionswho suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done. While Obama claims that all of history, all of its components and perspectives, must be taken into account, he also concedes that we must choose our better history. Memory is selective, the culmination of choosing which parts of history to remember and which to forget. Obamas call for remembrance is rife with contradictions; how can people fully embrace a collective memory when that memory itself dismisses and alters parts of history? Can memory even be considered a reliable chronological concept of the past when its construction pervades into the present? This uncertainty surrounding the endurance of memory is a concern which Faulkner addresses in his part-novel, part-play Requiem for a Nun. Within the story, Temple Drakethe storys protagonist, a disgraced southern womanmust come to terms

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with her violent, tumultuous past. She nds her current reality interspersed and often interrupted by the continuing inuence of her turbulent past. At the storys outset, we discover that Drakes six-month-old child died and that the nurse hired to care for the infanta woman frequently described as a nigger dope-end whore that murders white childrenadmitted to and was found guilty of murder. Now a few days before the execution, Drake is unable to rebuild her shattered life or distance herself from the blind rage and guilt that continue to encumber her existence. The book, another one of Faulkners experimental forays into narrative technique, also plays with this idea of interference and interruption through its very structure; the main narrative is constantly interrupted by passages that outline the history of Faulkners ctional Yoknapatawpha County. In this way, Drakes own contemporary reality is interrupted not only by her private past but also by the history of her surroundings, of her very origins. Drakes past, haunting and seemingly omnipresent, pervades into her present. When discussing the situation of the accused nurse, Drake and her husband Gowan Stevens argue about the possibility of saving the womans life. To assert her impotence in the matter, Drake states, Temple Drake is dead. Stevens replies, The past is never dead. Its not even past (Faulkner 92). This quote, emphasizing the endurance and persistence of history, asserts the role of memory in overcoming a violent past. When viewed beyond the pages of the novel that bore it, the sentiment of this quote reects the role of memory in overcoming the turbulent history of racism and slavery. The vast majority of Faulkners writings focus on the connection between memory and race; he focuses on entire communities, the families and the individuals who struggle against the overwhelming burdens of their own memories and whose inability to overcome their racism and prejudice ultimately foreshadows the decline and decay of the American South. When viewed within the context of Yoknapatawpha County, a context Faulkner introduces and reintroduces within Requiem for a Nun, the quote does not solely reect Drakes past. It reects a collective past, stained by the memories of slavery. By paraphrasing Faulkners quote in A More Perfect Union, Obama makes an

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unexpected but ultimately celebrated choice. It assumes, on the one hand, that his audience is literate or at least intellectual enough to understand its literary and historical signicance. In an interesting moment of academic actualization, Obamas paraphrasing enables Faulkners quote to become the very thing that it is discussing. Obamas paraphrasing carries into the present the words, sentiments and criticisms of the past. As Scott Horton writes in Harpers Magazine, the works of Faulkner are indeed intensely political, and their message was one that the readership would hardly have been prepared to cope with, in those dark days as the specter of war loomed over America. It seems we have to go forward seventeen presidential elections to come to the day when they become a matter of public discussion. Faulkners words, a reection and also a criticism of the race-relations of his day, are undeniably political. Through his allusions to Faulkners unique commentary, Obama creates a parallel between his speech and Faulkners profound texts, literary works that recurrently question the state of race relations in America. A frequent theme of his works, Faulkner often discusses the future of the South; will the South become a slave to its past, or will it triumph over this very burden? Obama echoes this inquiry in his speech but expands the context of the South to refer to the nation as a whole. In fact, Horton writes that Obamas speech is tied perfectly to Faulkners literary message. Obama is, as Faulkner says, a half-breed like Sam and Turl, Horton begins, but [Obama] notes the great distance that America as a nation has traveled from the day of Faulkners writing, in which the idea of nally crossing that bridge was unthinkable. Now, Obama tells us, the day has come. In one way, the optimism inherent in Obamas speech does indicate that the day has come. Obama demands that at this moment, in this election, we . . . come together and say, Not this time. He even ends his speech by describing a single moment of recognition from which our union grows stronger, from which perfection begins. Obama recognizes the progress already made by generations of Americans and acknowledges the hope he has for the youth of America, but his speech ultimately fails to break free from the chains of the past.

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Although his speech demands unity, progress and liberation from the racial prejudices of the past, A More Perfect Union undeniably contradicts its own perspectives on memory. This contradiction begins with Obamas recognizing the necessity of remembering the historical origins of tangible differences, resentments and concerns. Like Faulkner, he admits that confronting memory is fundamental to resolving contemporary issues but that liberation from the past is the only way to truly progress, to truly form a more perfect union. The line between confronting memory and falling victim to it, however, is one that Obama cannot seem to toe. When criticizing the comments of Reverend Wright, Obama says: The profound mistake of Reverend Wrights sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It is that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this countryis still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. Here, Obamas words reect those of Faulkner. Wright, like characters in Faulkners texts, fails to progress. He is chained to the social values of [his] generation (Horton). And yet, Obama constantly refers to the relentless sins of this country. Despite his optimism, he continues to emphasize history and memory as undeniable tenets of our nations identity; he simultaneously says the United States must break from its past but simultaneously recognize the racial divisions that he himself believes should be eliminated. In other words, Obama reiterates again and again that American society is in fact still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. This uncertainty is made all the more concrete when we analyze Obamas perspective on memory through the lenses of Marts and Unamunos works. Just as Obamas Constitution subsists in the tension between the rigidity of Marts tierra and Unamunos
mar, his unstable denition of memory exists between these authors contrasting

perceptions. Unamuno, who focuses only upon the movement of progress, considers the concept of looking backwards to be synonymous with looking towards the past. Although the sea, his key element, is undeniably a natural element that functions within a spatial realm, Unamuno uses this metaphor to develop a temporally focused critique. Unamuno writes, En este mundo de los silenciosos, en este fondo del mar, debajo de

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la Historia, es donde vive la verdadera tradicin, la eterna, en el presente, no en el pasadoy buscar la tradicin (la sustancia de la Historia, el fondo del presente) en el pasado muerto es buscar la eternidad en el pasado, en la muerte, buscar la eternidad de la muerte14 (41). He describes progress as the currents that excite still waters and memory as the search for eternity in death. Memory becomes a meaningless, stagnant chase. Even history, something already past, is described as olas, as waves, as in motion. Tradition is not dependent upon what was; it can and should reect the present. In this way, Unamuno extracts memory from concepts typically contextualized in the past. History and tradition become eternal, always in the background of the present and always changing. This redenition of history and tradition thus implies a constantly shifting source of identity, of national heritage and culture. Siebers notes that in Unamunos literary models of identity and progress, it is sometimes too easy to lose sight of the signicance of time, especially the expressive power exerted by memory (Siebers). Unamuno does commit this very omission; in the context of this essay, he dismisses altogether the role of memory and the inuence of time. The past becomes something immobile, something dead and useless. It is what actively impedes progress and movement instead of being something that is merely left behind. Memory, momentary glimpses into the past, thus becomes a source of constant stagnation in the never-ending development of the present. For Mart, however, this concept of looking backwards exists on a spatial plane. His focus always rests on the land itself, deep within and towards the center of the country. Thus, looking backwards is looking across borders, betraying roots to embrace false erudition. Those that abandon their own land decay and degenerate while those that support la tierraeven its history, its limiting yet widespread roots, advance and progress. It is the hombre natural, Marts construction of the ideal man, of the ideal citizen, that provides the catalyst for the country and is the source of its potential. Mart writes: No hay batalla entre la civilizacin y la barbarie, sino entre la falsa erudicin y la naturaleza. El hombre natural es bueno, y acata y premia la inteligencia superior15

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(18). The man that looks to nature and to their own uncorrupted culture for guidance, to la tierra, is the superior man; the community that rejects its roots and looks instead to false erudition is the community that collapses. Por eso, Mart writes, el libro importado ha sido vencido en Amrica por el hombre natural. Los hombres naturales han vencido a los letrados articiales. El mestizo autctono ha vencido al criollo extico16 (19). According to Mart, it is false erudition, not memory, which impedes growth. In this way, memory is embraced. In fact, it is openly praised. Unlike Unamunos analysis, Marts spatial construction does not dismiss or avoid a temporal dimension. La tierra is literally the origin; it is the mother, the birthplace, the bountiful ground from which all roots must grow. Inherent in this concept of origin is the concept of the past, of looking back to how everything began to nd the birthplace of culture, tradition, and Nuestra Amrica. It is for this reason that Mart asserts, La universidad europea ha de ceder a la universidad Americana. La historia de Amrica, de los incas de ac, ha de ensearse al dedillo, aunque no se ensee la de los arcontes de Grecia. Nuestra Grecia es preferible a la Grecia que no es nuestra. Nos es ms necesaria17 (19). The knowledge of history acts as a fundamental connection between a culture and its heritage; prioritization should be given to local, uncorrupted and natural history rather than to the more academic or more biased classic teachings from abroad. Memory is thus integral to the growth and momentous evolution of a culture. Looking to the past, in this way, is just another way of looking to the future. Obama oscillates between Mart and Unamunos two concepts of memory. On the one hand, Obama claims it is a mistake, a cultural disease, to hold onto memory. A perspective which reects Unamunos descriptions of the past as something that impedes progress, this view forewarns of memorys potential to stall development and trap a society of movement in stagnancy. Unamuno explains this potential through his metaphor of the sea; memory is frozen and immobile while the present is always in motion, fueled by the currents of change and nourished by the unrecognized people of its communities. Obama, although without the use of an accompanying metaphor, puts forth

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this same critique of memory. He reprimands Reverend Wright for depicting American society as static, as still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. By connecting these two ideas, stagnancy and memory, Obama condemns memory as something that inspires immobility and impedes growth or change, impeding societys evolution towards the ideal, towards a more perfect union. On the other hand, Obama contrastingly views memory as helpful, as necessary, to this development. Obama states, Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. This emphasis on the past, on the origins and roots of these issues, reects Marts arguments concerning history and la tierra. These origins are a vital piece of the present. They are necessary to address conicts, to understand and care for the madre enferma, the diseased country. In certain ways, Obama also looks to the past as Mart does: with respect and reverence, with hope for guidance and revelation.
OBAMA AND SUBJECTIVITY: A REVISION OF INTRAHISTORIA

When Obama discusses the past, he highlights an interesting aspect of our nations memory. Some may critique this choice as a political ploy, but his decision to unveil unheard voices is also an attempt to give power to those who previously felt powerless in the quest for change. It cannot be denied that Obama carefully selects the historical participants he highlights in his speechesnamely, those atypically represented and published. His depictions of the American people, of the true motivators of change and development, reect Unamunos original concept of intrahistoria: a process in which the forgotten and the nameless are praised as the true contributors to the waves of history. To understand intrahistoria, Unamunos original denition must be examined. Unamuno, who indirectly dismisses the role of memory, nevertheless emphasizes the essential role of the common, day-to-day inhabitants and laborers. He writes: Todo lo que cuentan a diario los peridicos, la historia toda del presente momento histrico, no es sino la supercie del mar, una supercie que se hiela y cristaliza en los libros y registros, y una vez cristalizada as, una capa dura, no mayor con respecto a la vida

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intrahistrica que esta pobre corteza en que vivimos en relacin al inmenso foco ardiente que lleva dentro18 (41). The seas surface represents the supercial depiction of a countrys true spirit and worth, a depiction that freezes and crystallizes, a depiction without life, movement, or vigor. This surface sharply contrasts with what dwells within the sea, beneath the surface and unseen by the public eye; this inmenso foco ardiente is the true spirit, the true vivacity, of the country. Unamuno continues: Los peridicos nada dicen de la vida silenciosa de los millones de hombres sin historia que a todas horas del da y en todos los pases del globo se levantan a una orden del sol y van a sus campos a proseguir la oscura y silenciosa labor cotidiana y eterna19 (41). These men sin historia are never published or acknowledged but they are the ones who do the daily, eternal, obscure and silent labor. Unamuno explains that this labor is what constitutes la vida intrahistrica, silenciosa y continua como el fondo mismo del mar that ultimately becomes la sustancia del progreso, la verdadera tradicin, la tradicin eterna20 (42). While it is clear that Unamuno extracts memory from concepts such as history and tradition, his redenition warrants further contemplation. Tradition no longer signies previously established customs; it is a present spirit, captured by contemporary currents of progress. Because it is constantly contemporary and never thrown out or replaced, it is eternal and forevermore true. Tradition is thus an evolving identity, a constantly developing sense of what is contemporarily relevant based on the actions of the anonymous yet vital populations of a country. While Obama continues to view tradition through a temporal lens, he does agree that a nations identity is always evolving and that this evolution is based on the efforts of the anonymous masses that, without proper recognition, support and advance towards a more perfect union. He does not attribute past progress to the politicians or lawmakers of the country; at one point, Obama states, This union may never be perfected, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I nd myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generationthe

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young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election. Although they remain anonymous, these generationsthe masses of individuals that subsist outside the political spheres of federal and state governmentare the true catalysts for change, for the nations advancement towards greater perfection. According to Obama, it is the everyday man, the everyday woman, even the everyday youth, who truly make history. When Obama discusses the birth of the Declaration of Independence in 1787, he mentions farmers alongside scholars, patriots alongside statesmen. The document, Obama implies, was not made real solely by its writers and signers. It was legitimized and inspired by every patriot, every farmer, every individual who traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution nally made real their declaration of independence. He also admits that the Constitution by itself will never be sufcient to achieve the ideals it reects; What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their partto narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time. Every struggle, however small or unrecognized, is what inspires the narrowing of this gap. It is the individual effort of the everyday citizen, not the proclaimed leaps or successes of those in power that will ultimately perfect a awed union. Both Unamuno and Obama claim that these silent, anonymous entities enhance their nations potential and contribute to the profundity of progress. Yet, whereas Unamuno maintains these peoples anonymity throughout his writings, Obama explicitly highlights the singular actions and words of politically peripheral individuals. Unamuno, although explicitly describing intrahistoria, never individually recognizes the forgotten, unseen depths that he praises. What is most important to him is the recognition of progress. The histories and individual memories of these anonymous masses are never signicant enough to take precedence over the larger issue of advancement and development. Obama, on the other hand, recognizes these individuals however mundane their names

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or experiences may be. His acknowledgment of the everyday man, even to the neglected man, captures the source of Obamas promised change. He ends his race speech not with lofty allusions to generations or the people but to a particular moment, a particular group of people, who would otherwise be overlooked by history. He describes a young white woman, Ashley Baia, who organized Obamas campaign in Florence, South Carolina. In this particular story, she is at a roundtable discussion with other volunteers all explaining their reasons for getting involved. Obama describes the situation as follows:
And nally they come to this elderly black man whos been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why hes there. And he does not bring up a specic issuehe simply says to everyone in the room, I am here because of Ashley. Im here because of Ashley. By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children. But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

But it is where we start, Obama declares. That is where the perfection begins. A moment of understanding, of encouragement and support, between that young white girl and that old black man is where inspiration is born, where compassion takes ight. Despite the eventual recognition it was given, this moment was not initially intended to garner accolades or publicity. It was an intimate confession, a personal acknowledgement. Yes, Obama later makes mentions of anonymous, vague generations but by directly speaking about specic individuals and their stories, he converts anonymity into unprecedented recognition. He praises the anonymous and then strips anonymity from these individuals faces in a way that Unamuno never attempted to do in En torno al casticismo. Through these moments and these individuals that

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he highlights over and over again, Obama shares with the nation insights from those who may not have a public voice of their own. By praising them in his speeches from a presidential candidates platform, he recognizes their worth and their importance, and demands that America do the same. And yet, this moment of recognition is simultaneously another moment altogether, a moment of memory. He calls for a renewed united effort based on one memory, one snapshot, between two individuals. Inevitably, nothing Obama shares is completely the voice or the stories of other people. Everything he says reects, in an undeniable way, his own memories striving to preserve the memories of others. Despite his constantly shifting perspective on memory, Obama does believe that it can be used as inspiration for growth, for change. For example, when quoting a passage from his rst book
Dreams from my Father in his speech, Obama reads, In chronicling our journey, the

stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didnt need to feel shame about . . . memories that all people might study and cherishand with which we could start to rebuild. Memories, although sometimes negative in nature, do not have to incite shame. They are undeniable truths about a history that must be addressed before society can work towards recreation, rebirth, and reconstruction. Yet, Obama also denes memory as an impediment. The constitution was stained by this nations original sin of slavery, Obama states. A stain, like a memory, is a fragment of the past that pervades into the present; it represents sin, something unworthy and despicable that tarnishes present ideals. While this paper has already discussed Obamas shifting perspectives on memory, his inability to dene the role of remembrance ultimately affects the individual depictions he chooses to portray. Obama, seemingly torn between dismissing and embracing memory, takes the time to share these unique stories in a manner that bespeaks of the underlying issue of subjectivity. Obamas discussion of these memories is rife with misrepresentation in the same way that history is misrepresented without intrahistoria. For example, Obama

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speaks directly about his white grandmother when comparing his relationship with Reverend Wright to the contradictions inherent in the black community. Obama says:
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmothera woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacriced again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

How can the United States embrace the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past if that past is so shameful? On the one hand, he praises Reverend Wright for being sensitive to the concerns of the black community and then condemns him for this closed-minded focus. Yet this memory of his grandmother is a similarly narrow, piercing snapshot of her fears and prejudices. By holding onto this memory, Obama is falling victim to the same profound mistake as Wright. He is letting the past limit his perspective. Former New York Mayor Ed Koch was one of the few Democrats who publicly denounced Obamas speech. Among his many criticisms was his harsh commentary on Obamas portrayal of his grandmother. In his critique, Koch writes, To equate her fears, similar to Jesse Jacksons, with Wrights anti-American, anti-white, anti-Jew, and antiIsrael rantings is despicable coming from a grandson. In todays vernacular, he threw her under the wheels of the bus to keep his presidential campaign rolling. For shame. It is true that a spoken confession, whispered and hushed, is an intimate moment of vulnerability. Voicing such a confession in a public speech meant for millions, a speech that will be transcribed and rewritten in print, is irrevocably binding that person to their moment of guilt. In fact, comparing this confession to the rhetoric of Reverend Wright implies that his grandmothers hesitant, intimate admission is tantamount to Wrights publicized condemnations meant for the masses. Whether this memory should

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be forgotten or remembered for the sake of progress is up to debate. Yes, this memory illuminates the realities of racial tension and divides at a time when race is a topic broached only through sensationalism. It may even humanize a sentiment that seems so ignorant and cruel, but it also gives eternal life to the racial prejudices that Obama wants the nation to overcome. It gives a literary and oratory permanence to momentary thoughts and fears. Obama spends the majority of his race speech highlighting the contradictions within the black community, within the white community, in Reverend Wright and even in his own grandmother, but he never points out the contradictions inherent in his own argument. Ultimately, the speech is a response to racism, racism in the media and in the polls, but also as a contemporary issue with pervasive, dangerous roots. It is a call to arms, a demand to recognize the legitimacy of why racial tensions exist and a rallying cry to begin this process of perfecting the union. There is a ne line, however, between recognizing this legitimacy and bestowing more power to the racial divides Obama hopes to recognize. By presenting memories that focus upon prejudice and discrimination, by underlining the reasons for why anger and frustration are valid responses to current situations, Obama may be widening the gap he wishes to narrow. Samuel Beckett, an Irish avant-garde and absurdist writer most famous for his play En
attendant Godot, once wrote, Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence

and nothingness. And yet this thought is a declaration born into being through words. Obama struggles with this same contradiction. Memory is an unnecessary stain on progress, but it must be acknowledged in order to effect change. His text in one line condemns memory and then in the next, glories it. On the one hand, Obama reects Unamuno; on the other, he reects Mart. Unamuno does not consider history to be vital to a nations progress within his essay En torno al casticismo. In fact, he purposefully redenes the concept of tradition to reestablish cultural identity as a constantly contemporary presence. Mart, whose focus was on combating external

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inuences rather than internal conicts, only emphasizes one possible divide between his countrys people: lo natural and false erudition. The chasms that come from subjectively perceived history were not a factor; history was always unifying, always connecting el
hombre natural with his true mother, la tierra. While Obama recognizes history as a

source of subjective divisions, he also considers it to be a vital part of advancement. Thus, he straddles both sides of the constantly shifting see-saw between memory as a necessity and memory as an impediment to progress. In this way, he struggles with a contradiction both Unamuno and Mart ignore.
RACE AND THE END OF RACE IN A MORE PERFECT UNION AND IN NUESTRA AMRICA

Obama proclaims that a simple solution exists for a problem with so complex of origins. Yes, one must view society as ever-changing, as uid and address the realities of complaints and of burdens; One must understand the roots of racial tensions before he openly condemns them. But another solution exists. To nd that simpler solution, Obama turns to Scripture. Obama states:
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all of the worlds great religions demandthat we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brothers keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sisters keeper. Let us nd that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reect that spirit as well.

To Obama, the issue of race would fade if people simply looked at one another in the manner in which God instructed them to. For his part, Mart proposes an alternative solution: no hay odio de las razas, porque no hay razas21 (22). Mart calls attention to a universal element of humanity that supersedes any racial divisions. In a way, so does Obama but Obama insists that this common stake, this universality, should pervade into and transform politics itself. Marts declaration, however, eliminates the concept of race altogether. While Obama does not completely reject this possibility, he writes that race is a contemporary issue that must be broached. He denes it as contemporary, as

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current, as continued from the past but not necessarily present in the future. Yes, Mart may insist upon a slightly more extreme perspective, but he elaborates on an ideal which Obama believe cannot exist within the frame of the current reality but may be able to exist in the future. What is most interesting about Marts and Obamas depictions of race, however, is the ways in which both writers cannot, even when lauding supposed universality, tear themselves away from describing their countrymen based on racial divisions. Obama, so keen on sharing singular memories and hoping to address the histories of all those who feel forgotten, nds an irreconcilable tension between addressing memory and addressing race. It is understandable that in a speech about race, Obama discusses race but he fails to balance his own racial divides with a discourse on racial unity. In approaching this issue, Obama perpetuates the racial polarization he himself denounces. He says, In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still ies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans. Although he talks of unity by using the words powerful coalition, this harmonious synthesis is still divisible into two concrete parts: African Americans and white Americans. Why does race even need to be mentioned? Is it not enough to just be a coalition of Americans? He further states, The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well. Here, by introducing another racial category he inherently gives legitimacy to the division, and by excluding all other racial categories, he dismisses their relevance. He claims that the words of Reverend Wright rightly offend white and black alikebut by explicitly differentiating between two different audiences, Obama undermines the commonalities of their responses. One could even say that his emphasis on white and black denies legitimacy to other races of people who feel just as vulnerable to and affected by racism.

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It is true that mentioning specic races helps a marginalized audience feel more included in the broader term American. The difference between a laundry list of different races and a phrase such as Americans of every race is that with the latter, one cannot point to a particular moment where he can identify himself. Yet dividing the nation into its racial subgroups does just that. It divides the nation into visual categories even as it calls for a sense of unity and community. When Obama states, This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children, he perpetuates the idea of an identity based solely upon race. In fact, Obama neglects altogether a growing population of those with mixed races and heritages, a population that he himself belongs to. By dening communities as white or black, Obama himself neglects the small progress of some communities and individuals. He takes the published snapshots of recent history and skims the surface of Unamunos sea instead of truly delving into its depths. For Mart, this tension also exists between issues of memory and race: the marginalization inherent in land and the memory that is inextricably linked to its roots. Mart looks to la tierra as a rallying, unifying moment for his people, but by proposing an ideal, he ignores the voices of those who do feel ostracized, dismissed or forgotten. In his analysis of Marts essay, Roberto Fernandez Retamar22 writes:
En Nuestra Amrica es bien sabido que hay numerosas comunidades que, con razn, no se sienten parte de nuestra hipottica Atlntida: baste recordar a los millones de indios descendientes de quienes sobrevivieron a la espantosa operacin genocida que fue la conquista; y a los caribeos que tienen (como los cubanos, los brasileos y otros pueblos de nuestra Amrica) fuertes y dolorosas races africanas, pero que en su caso no viven en territorios iberizados. Sin embargo, aquella Atlntida englobadora de que habl . . . est obligada no slo a no excluir a tales comunidades, sino a reconocerles la importancia de primer orden que tienen, a defender sus culturas, a integrarlas como son a las sociedades armoniosas que debemos construir, y que no existen an en parte alguna23 (Retamar, 803-804).

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In other words, Mart fails to address the conicts between differing cultures and origins when he insists upon lo natural, la tierra, and a culture based around the unifying concept of the nation. Retamar comments on this neglect and immediately highlights some of these forgotten communities, discussing los indios and los africanos, for example. Interestingly, he also discusses culture as having raices,24 metaphorical connections to the earth itself; where are their lands and their origins though if these neglected communities have no place on the tierra of Marts unied Amrica? Mart recognizes only the importance of remembering one ideal identity, but there are a diverse number of cultures and origins already present. In a way, Marts supposed call for a unied nation actually marginalizes some of the communities that Retamar acknowledges in his critique, a marginalization that Retamar explicitly states should not exist. Mart writes: Eramos una visin, con el pecho de atleta, las manos de petimetre y la frente de
nioel indio, mudo, nos daba vueltas alrededor, y se iba al monte, a la cumbre del monte, a bautizar sus hijos. El negro, oteado, cantaba en la noche la msica de su corazn, solo y desconocido, entre las olas y las eras (21).25

Here, Mart makes a clear distinction between us and those that exist outside of this denition: el indio and el negro. These marginalized groups are also physically excluded, singing in the shadows of the night or blessing their children in the peaks of mountains. They are intimately connected to la naturaleza in a way that Mart welcomes, but they are not included in his denition of we and are explicitly dened as a marginalized group both physically and linguistically. Mart frequently refers to race despite his ultimate claim that race does not exist. Aside from the outright distinctions of indio and negro in the above quote, he also discusses la raza india, el mestizo,26 and la cabeza blanca y el cuerpo pinto de indio y criollo.27 Although he does racially divide people and perhaps marginalize them through this division, Obama does not promulgate explicit differences between an us and a them. He does not identify himself as purely an

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African-American or as a member of an exclusive black community; he is, as he has told us before, the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. Yes, Obama emphasizes the we of the American people, but the only time he distinguishes between an us and a them in the nearly 5,000 words of his speech is when he references American fears of jobs [being] shipped overseas. What Obama does instead, however, is simply subdivide this we into its racial communities. The analyses of Kevin Meehan and Paul B. Miller mark a different reading of Marts racial theory. When taking note of the diction Mart employs in his essay, they declare, Cabe recordar que Mart escogi la palabra mestizo, no mulato para describir la hibridez cultural de Nuestra Amrica. Que mestizo signique un encuentro entre europeo e indgena parece especialmente evidente en otro pasaje en que Mart discute el ascenso del nacionalismo latinoamericano.28 In their analysis, Meehan and Miller concentrate particularly on two instances. The rst is the previously mentioned quote of el negro and the second quote is introduced the preceding paragraph. In its entirety, the second quote reads, Con . . . la cabeza blanca y el cuerpo pinto de indio y criollo, venimos, denodados, al mundo de las naciones29 (Mart 20). In the rst instance, Meehan and Miller assert, el negro est marginado.30 In the second (and similarly throughout the rest of the essay), they claim that el negro queda ausente.31 To use this as evidence against Marts overall racial philosophy would isolate this essay from his larger literary corpus, but it is true that within the context of Nuestra Amrica itself the marginalization and omission of el negro is a surprise. Meehan and Miller further state that although the clebre frase32 regarding the inexistence of race is meant above all to resolver ideas contradictorias sobre cuestiones raciales,33 it ultimately negates la existencia de practicas racistas opor lo menos tienden a borrar la diferencia entre racistas blancos y nacionalistas negros.34 This issue of marginalization and omission is also evident in Obamas speech. His emphasis on racial division, the marginalization of certain racial subgroups and the

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exclusion of others legitimate struggles, weakens Obamas eventual call for unity and collective action. If Nuestra Amrica is an essay about redening Latin America,35 what does it mean if el negro is pushed into obscurity, el indio is hidden in the mountaintops and los mulatos are neglected altogether? If A More Perfect Union is a discourse similarly focused on redening the contemporary American conversation about race, its frequent reiteration of the polarization of white and black peoples and its neglect of other racial categories is alarming. Both texts attempt to rise above the conicts of race by evoking the higher elements of humanity inherent in all of man in their efforts to illuminate racial divides, they nevertheless incorporate elements of the very racism they attempt to overcome. As in Obamas speech, exceptionsor perhaps, contradictionsexist amidst Marts demands for universality. Yet despite these awed moments, Mart maintains a discourse that is relatively supportive of a universal ideal, an ideal that, although arguably built upon a racial reiteration, is potentially a triumph. In the midst of many of his contemporaries already discussing race and condemning racism,36 Mart achieves a unique argument. What Mart is attacking here is not simply the specic arguments of individual racists, Martin S. Stabb writes, but the very premises upon which all these arguments rest. That the races were readily discernible, clearly marked-off, real entities was seldom doubted by Marts Spanish contemporaries: here, however, it is suggested that the term race merely designates an arbitrary, manmade grouping (437). What Mart attacks is the very concept of race itself as an arbitrary, potentially dangerous but ultimately useless category. Perhaps his bold claim that no hay razas37 is not a dismissal of los cuerpos diversos en forma y en color but rather a demand that this word, this concept, be eliminated from our collective bias and perspective. Concepts of the ideal are typically dismissed as fantastical and impossibly optimistic, but why must utopian ideas be condemned when they are just that, ideas, suppositions not yet tangibly rooted in reality? After all, every reality started out as a mere dream.

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Retamar asks in his essay analyzing the content and impact of Marts Nuestra Amrica: Qu es nuestra Amrica sino una Atlntida?39 (802). On the one hand, connecting Marts concept of Nuestra Amrica to that of Atlantis evokes the tropes of fantasy and of mythical legendry. It evokes the unreal, that which has no place in the realm of reality. On the other hand, Atlantis is a unique metaphor in that it also represents a supposedly advanced prehistoric lost civilization awaiting revitalization and rebirth. Marts constant demands to return to la tierra, to return to history and tradition and the cultures inherent in the past, can be seen as connected to the archaic prehistoric nature of a lost civilization. Yet, it is a civilization which remains advanced, purposefully propelled towards progress despite its place in the past. Retamar denes Marts Atlantis as valiente40 and imaginativa,41 bold and beautiful reincarnations of an ideal. Retamar admits that reality may fall short of this hypothetical ideal, but he concludes his essay not by condemning this gap but by praising its possibilities. No tenemos derecho, Retamar asks, a esperar que un da, que querramos cercano, emerger esa Atlntida nueva y antigua en la que encontraremos casa comn? Se me dir que sueo? Quien abraza una causa justa es el nico hombre prctico, dijo Mart, cuyo sueo de hoy ser la ley de maana42 (806). Through his portrayals of a raceless society, Mart thus proposes an ideal. Like Retamar, Obama acknowledges the limitations of his contemporary reality but leaves the possibility open to hope that universality will one day supercede any racial divides that threaten the collective growth and progress of the nation. Obama does not, however, share this insistence in eliminating race as a concept. In his speech, the word race and its derivatives43 appear thirty-two times without hesitation or apology. In fact, A More Perfect Union has been subtitled The Race Speech, and Obama has similarly made no motions to change or disguise the word, concept or characterization of race. Although his ultimate denition of humanity as my brothers keeper and my sisters keeper is undeniably free from racial connotations, his speech demonstrates the pervasive permanence of race as an identity and as a denition.

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In one sense, Obamas emphasis on race is what highlights its relevance in todays political and social dialogue. It is the reason why this speech has been praised for being so honest and frank. Above all, the acknowledgement of race as a tangible identity is what makes his speech extraordinary in the context of its time and its political milieu. This emphasis, however, does distance contemporary reality from the racially neutral ideals that Obama expounds. For Mart, the claim of no hay razas may have seemed nave but it undeniably posited unity and collectivity as a possibility. For Obama, Americas future as a country strengthened by my brothers keepers and my sisters keepers is much less tangible; with every reminder of our current, invasive racial divisions, true unity seems further and further away. The illusory nature of this unity would be insignicant were it not for the benets it could bring. For Obama, this unity is the only way Americas people can truly move beyond a stained history and perfect the ideal union promised by the founding fathers since this nations inception. Mart also shares a similarly greater vision for unity, that of Cuban independence. Fernando Ortiz,44 who profoundly questioned the role of racism in Cuba, has written:
El absolutismo colonial, con falta de libertades y sobra de opresiones, necesitaba del racismo como elemento ideolgico de su estructuracin social. No bastaba con calicar a un ser humano adversario, sometido o supeditable, con el adjetivo circunstancialmente adecuado. Haba que calibrarlo con un estigma biolgico, para que la justicacin de su demrito social no dependiera de un juicio controvertible sino del prejuicio de una fatalidad congnita, ostensible por la anatoma.45 (Stabb 438).

As Stabb points out in his analysis of Marts treatment of race, Mart clearly believed that Cuba would not be able to free itself of colonial domination without the combined efforts of blanco, negro and mulato. Marts demand for unity can readily be seen through his exclamation, Es la hora del recuento, y de la marcha unida46 when he insists that brothers ignore conicts of conquest, land and race to instead come together

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in the ght against greater evils47 (Irwin). For the sake of Cuban independence and defeating the overturning the controlling inuences of imperial and colonial forces, a collective effort was needed. A people undivided by social hierarchy were required. Ortiz, speaking from the reception hall of the Municipal Palace of Havana in 1941, said,48 One cannot accuse Jos Mart of being an opportunistic demagogue for his attitude which is as reectively deliberate as it is patriotically reforming . . . Mart had to face the race question and its social and political repercussions realistically in undertaking the organization of the revolutionary movement in Cuba. (269) In this speech, Ortiz specically denes Marts clarication of race as his patriotic task (270). In scanning the immense parabola of racism in Cuba, characterized by the two extremes of the gloomy reality and the brilliance of the ideal, Marts greatest task was to anticipate the future, projecting the political perspective toward a positive social solution of racial conicts, where the dissonances might be changed into a symphony (Ortiz 256). What a symphony he creates. Blood, a substance which used to condemn a mans skin, no longer indicates a divisive identity. It comes from the earth itself, from the common denominator amongst people born of and ghting for the same lands. In fullling his patriotic task, Mart has reconstructed patriotism. Within the context of Nuestra Amrica, his discussion of race is only one aspect of the ultimate message he hopes to convey: a spirit of la Amrica nueva, of an America that is ercely ours. The same can be said of Obama,49 who similarly oscillates between these two extremes of his own racial parabola. His discourse, always wavering between competing concepts of memory and race, nevertheless manages to arrive at a poetic moment. At the very end of his speech, memory is ultimately revealed as his catalyst for change; perfection, although described as impossible, is still one step closer to fruition. Race recedes as an issue. It is no longer described as a legitimate cause for resentment and rupture but is instead dened as an opportunity for unity. Although often referred to as The Race Speech, Obamas discourse carries another name that is too often neglected and dismissed. The medias focus on the speechs simpler subtitle is perhaps rather myopic. As in Marts

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essay, Obamas discussion of race is only one aspect, a central aspect to be sure, but only one aspect of the dialogue. His nal message is about hope. There is a new hope, a new moment of recognition, for America. It is a speech about Americas path towards a more perfect union. A More Perfect Union was not a triumph because it redened Americas conversation about race; it is a triumph because it renewed and revived the conversation. By itself, this speech is not enough to convince generations to let go of their hidden fears and rage; by themselves, these words are not enough to inspire a much-needed racial revolution. They carry too many wavering perspectives, too many surprising moments of contradiction, to be entirely persuasive. Obamas discourse was, however, a bold reection. It was a speech which reected the same vulnerability to prejudice and racism that its speaker attributes to generations of Americans, from Reverend Wright to his grandmother. As a declaration, it is too awed to move a country. As one mans frank and honest deliberation, however, it is a rapturous catalyst for thought. But why must a speech be condemned for failing to fulll an ideal? Just as Retamar implies, just as Obama declares, perhaps this moment of simple reection and acknowledgment is where the path to perfection begins.

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REFERENCES Baker Jr., Houston A. What Should Obama do about Rev. Jeremiah Wright? Salon. 29 April 2008. 4 November 2010. <http://www.salon.com>. Barnett, Dean. Obama the Ditherer: Answering the question no one asked. The Weekly Standard. 19 March 2008. 4 November 2010 <http://www.weeklystandard.com>. Cabo Aseguinolaza, Fernando, Anxo Abun Gonzalez, and Csar Dominguez. A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula. N.p.: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2010. 213. Print. Vol. 1 of Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages. Faulkner, William. Requiem for a Nun. New York: Random House, 1951. Horton, Scott. The Past Is Not Past. Or Is It? Harpers Magazine. 24 March 2008. 9 November 2010. <http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/03/hbc-90002725>. Irwin, Robert McKee. Ramona and Postnationalist American Studies: On Our America and the Mexican Borderlands. American Quarterly. College Park: Dec. 2003. Vol. 55, Iss. 4; p 539. Proquest. 9 November 2010. <http://proquest.umi.com>. Koch, Ed. Why Obamas Speech was Unconvincing. Real Clear Politics. 25 March 2008. 9 November 2010. <http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/obamas_ unconvincing_speech.html>. Kristol, William. Lets Not, and Say We Did. The New York Times. 24 March 2008. 4 November 2010. <http://www.nytimes.com>. Lakshmanan, Indira and Heidi Przybyla. Obamas Race Speech Echoes Kennedys 1960 Address n Religion. Bloomberg. 19 March 2008. 4 November 2010. <http://www.bloomberg.com>. Mart, Jos. Lo mejor de Jos Mart. Guatemala: Editorial Piedra Santa, 1994. Mart, Jos. Our America. Trans. Elinor Randall. Our America. Ed. Philip S. Foner. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977. Meehan, Kevin and Paul B. Miller. Mart, Schomburg y la cuestin racial en las Amricas. Afro-Hispanic Review. Columbia: Fall 2006. Vol. 25, Iss. 2; pg. 73. Proquest. 9 Nov. 2010. Noonan, Peggy. A Thinking Mans Speech. Wall Street Journal. 21 March 2008. 4 November 2010. <http://online.wsj.com>. Obama, Barack. A More Perfect Union. The Hufngton Post. 18 March 2008. 20 July 2010. <http://www.hufngtonpost.com>. Transcript.

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People. Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglar Harper, 2010. 30 November 2010. <http://www.etymonline.com/index.php>. Public. Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglar Harper, 2010. 30 November 2010. <http://www.etymonline.com/index.php>. Retamar, Roberto Fernndez. Nuestra Amrica: cien aos. Nueva Revista de Filologa Hispnica, Vol. 40, No. 2 (1992). pp. 791-806. JSTOR. 10 September 2010. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/40302663>. Rich, Frank. The Republican Resurrection. The New York Times. 23 March 2008. 4 November 2010. <http://www.nytimes.com>. Ross, Brian, and Rehab El-Buri. Obamas Pastor: God Damn America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11. ABC News. 13 March 2008. 1 December 2010. <http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/ story?id=4443788>. Ruiz, Vicki L. Nuestra Amrica: Latino History as United States History. The Journal of American History, Vol. 93, No. 3 (Dec 2006). pp 655-672. JSTOR. 10 September 2010. <http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.usc.edu/stable/4486408>. Siebers, Tobin A. The terrain of poetry and cultural memory in the rst Spanish avant-garde (1914-1925). Diss, U of Michigan, 2006. Publication no. AAT 3238091. Proquest. 9 November 2010. <http://proquest.umi.com>. Sierra, Jerry A. Jos Mart: Apostle of Cuban Independence. History of Cuba. 11 October 2010. 9 November 2010. <http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/marti/marti.htm>. Stabb, Martin S. Mart and the Racists. Hispania, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec 1957). pp 434-439. JSTOR. 10 September 2010. <http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.usc.edu/stable/334497>. Stewart, John. Baracks Wright Response. The Daily Show. 18 March 2008. No. 13037, Season 3. < http://www.thedailyshow.com>. Unamuno, Miguel de. En torno al casticismo. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2008.

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ENDNOTES
1 In

early 2008, Trinity United Church of Christan overwhelmingly African-American megachurch in Chicago exceeding 6,000 membersbegan to sell sermons to the general public. The sermons of Emeritus Pastor Wright quickly made headlines because of its strong denunciations of the United States. Two key fragments of his sermons gorged media outlets; the rst, his declaration from a 2003 sermon: The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing God Bless America. No, no, no, God damn America . . . for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme. The second was his observation from a 2001 sermon: We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. Americas chickens are coming home to roost (Ross). word has no true translation into English; it is a concept imagined into being by Unamuno and it has never carried over into English vernacular. For this reason, we will preserve the word in its original Spanish. analysis of these texts is not a larger commentary about their respective authors. The critiques and observations made in this paper concerning these writers is limited to the boundaries of these specic texts; we will not be committing the error of dwarng an entire literary corpus with one essay, one collection of essays or one novel-play. in the veins of the Andes (Mart, Our America 85)

2 Intrahistory. This

3 The

4 silver 5

Those without faith in their country are seven-month weaklings. Because they have no courage, they deny it to others (Mart, Our America 85). government must originate in the country. The spirit of the government must be that of the country . . . Good government is nothing more than the balance of the countrys natural elements (Mart, Our America 87) natural man waves of history, with their rumble and foam reverberating in the sunlight, roll upon a continuous sea, deep, immensely deeper than the layer that undulates on a silent sea, whose deepest reaches are never lit by the sun (Cabo Aseguinolaza 213). surface that freezes and crystallizes extinct

6 The

8 The

9a

10 river, never 11 eternal 12 the

tradition

depths of the present . . . in the entrails of the sea

13 sea-water 14

In this silent world, within the depths of the sea underneath History, is where true eternal tradition livesin the present, not in the past . . . to search for tradition (the substance of history, the depths of the present) within the past is to search for eternity in the past, in deathit is to search for eternity in death. The struggle is not between civilization and barbarity, but between false erudition and Nature. The natural man is good, and he respects and rewards superior intelligence (Mart, Our America 87). is why the imported book has been conquered in America by the natural man. Natural men have conquered learned and articial men. The native halfbreed has conquered the exotic Creole (Mart, Our America 87). European university must bow to the American university. The history of America, from the Incas to the present, must be taught in clear detail and to the letter, even if the archons of Greece are overlooked. Our Greece must take priority over the Greece which is not ours. We need it more (Mart, Our America 88). All that is told daily by the newspapers, the entire history of the current historical moment, is nothing more than the surface of the sea, a surface that freezes and crystallizes in books and registers, and once crystallized in this way, becomes a hard layer, nothing more with regards to intra-historical life than this poor crust in which we live as compared to this immense burning light that it carries within (Cabo Aseguinolaza 213).

15

16 That

17 The

18

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19 The

newspapers say nothing of the silent life of millions of men without history who at all hours of the day and in every country of the world raise to the order of the sun and go to the countryside to complete the obscure, silent, everyday and eternal labor. intrahistorical life, silent and continuous like the very depths of the sea . . . is the substance of progress, the true tradition, the eternal tradition. can be no racial animosity, because there are no races (Mart, Our America 93-94). is a Cuban intellectual born in 1930 who is also a poet, essayist and literary critic.

20 The

21 There

22 Retamar 23 In

our America, it is well known that numerous communities exist that, with reason, dont feel as if they are part of our hypothetical Atlantis: it is worthwhile to remember the millions of Indians descended from survivors of the horrible genocide that was the [Spanish] conquest, and the Caribbeans that have (such as the Cubans, the Brazilians, and other towns of our America) strong and painful African roots, but that in their case are not living in iberian-ized territories. Nonetheless, that Atlntida englobadora that I spoke of . . . is not only obligated to include said communities but also to recognize their fundamental importance, to defend their cultures, to integrate them as they are now into the ideal harmonious societies that should be created and that still do not exist anywhere.

24 roots 25 We

were a phenomenon with the chest of an athlete, the hands of a dandy, and the brains of a child . . . the Indian hovered near us in silence, and went off to the hills to baptize his children. The Negro was seen pouring out the songs of his heart at night, alone and unrecognized among the rivers and wild animals (Mart, Our America 91). of mixed race

26 Person 27 28

our heads white and our bodies mottled, both Indian and Creole (Mart, Our America 88). We should keep in mind that Mart chose the word mestizo, not mulato [a person of mixed race, specically between black and white], to describe the cultural hybridity of Nuestra Amrica. That mestizo signies a meeting of European and Indigenous is particularly evident in another passage in which Mart discusses the rise of Latin-American nationalism. . . . our heads white and our bodies mottled, both Indian and Creole, we fearlessly entered the world of nations (Mart, Our America 88). marginalized

29 With

30 El negro is 31 remains

absent phrase

32 celebrated 33 resolve 34 the

contradicting ideas about racial issues

existence of racist practices or . . . at the very least, tends to erase the difference between white racists and black nationalists phrase Latin America was not used frequently or colloquially during Marts time; thus, he never explicitly references it in his writings. Marts essay Nuestra Amrica, however, did refer to the collection of SouthernAmerican entities rallying together against imperial and colonial forces. In this way, if we view the phrase Latin America as referring to those parts of the Americas that were once part of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, it is a contemporary phrase that nevertheless matches Marts illustration. The phrase Iberian America is perhaps coterminous. the raciological interpretations of Sarmiento in the 19th century, many essayists such as Agustn Alvarez, Francisco Bulnes, Carlos Octavio Bunge, Alcides Arguedas and Jos Ingenieros also contributed to the racial discussion. are no races (Mart, Our America 93-94).

35 The

36 Following

37 There

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238

38 39

bodies of various shapes and colors (Mart, Our America 94). What is our America if not an Atlantis?

40 brave 41 imaginative 42 Do

we not have the right to wait for the day, hopefully near, when this new and ancient Atlantis in which we nd our common home will emerge? Will they tell me I dream? Whoever embraces a just cause is the only practical man, Mart said, whose dream of today will be the law of tomorrow. also including racial, racist, racism, racially, etc.

43 i.e. race, but 44 Ortiz

was an anthropologist credited with the concept of transculturation, a theory about the merging and converging of cultures that in many ways led to a rethinking of race relations in the Americas. absolutism, with a lack of rights and excessive oppression, needed racism as an ideological element of its social structure. It wasnt enough to label a human being as an enemy, subdued or subordinated, and have that adjective be adequately circumstantial. Rather, they had to qualify it with a biological stigma, so that the justication of their social demerits was not dependent upon a subjective judging but rather on the prejudice of a congenital misfortune, evident in ones anatomy. is the time of mobilization, of marching together (Mart, Our America 85).

45 Colonial

46 It

47 The

original quote: Los que se ensean los puos, como hermanos celosos, que quieren los dos la misma tierra, o el de la casa chica, que le tiene envidia al de casa mejor, ha de encajar, de modo que sean una, las dos manos (Mart 18). Translation: Those who taught one another the right of force, like jealous brothers claiming the same land, or like the owner of a small house who envies the owner of a greater one, must be tted together, the way two hands conjoin to form one (Irwin). On July 9, 1941, Fernando Ortiz delivered a speech on the race philosophy of Mart. This speech was translated by Mercer Cook of the PHYLON staff and is printed with authors consent and cooperation. scholar Vicki L. Ruiz once wrote when analyzing Nuestra Amrica: With a utopian bent, Jos Mart dreamed of a New America. Racism, nativism, and economic imperialism, which shaped Marts world, remain with us in the twenty-rst century. I seek a fuller recounting of this history, encompassing both transhemispheric and community perspectives. Nuestra Amrica es historia Americana. Our America is American history. In analyzing Obamas A More Perfect Union in the context of Marts seminal essay, Ruizs comparison is perhaps slightly less incredible.

48

49 History

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

EDITORS Norah Ashe Nathalie Joseph Sophie Lesinska Erika Nanes

STUDENT EDITORS Sarah Ingerson Eric Weintraub