The Marlowe Society of America is pleased to invite proposals for talks on a guaranteed panel at the Sixteenth Century Society & Conference (SCSC) in Baltimore, Maryland, to be held from October 26 to 29, 2023.
Please see below for the full CFP and instructions for how to submit an abstract.
CFP: Marlowe and State Violence
The Massacre in Paris, Jew of Malta and Tamburlaine all center around the use of force by the state. But the state-sanctioned violence is rarely, if ever, depicted in heroic or even socially approved ways. The state violence in these texts pushes the boundaries of what is deemed acceptable, involving, as it does, acts of terrorism, assassination, and war crimes. Of course, Marlowe is writing before international laws governing wars were codified. So he, his co-authors, and audiences may not have viewed Barabas as a terrorist, Tamburlaine as war criminal, or Guise as an assassin. Nevertheless, early moderns would have been familiar with Just War theory from Aquinas and the broader ethics of war from chivalric tales. How are Marlowe’s plays challenging, upsetting or destabilising assumptions and theories about the morality of state violence? How does his own, alleged, involvement in state-sanctioned violence influence his perception of state violence? How does his treatment of mythic battles as described in Dido, Queen of Carthage and Faustus, differ from his treatment of onstage representations of more-contemporary events? How does the race and/or gender of the victim or perpetrator of state violence alter Marlowe’s thinking about the crime? Any papers that attempt to answer these or other questions related to Marlowe’s exploration of state violence are welcome.
Please send a title, abstract, and bio to Eric Dunnum (edunnum@campbell.edu) and Matt Carter (MatthewCarter2@clayton.edu) by April 1, 2023.