Rhetoric, ritual, and redemption: Narratives of executions in late medieval and early modern England

The way the executions of criminals, traitors, and heretics were described over the course of four centuries across a wide range of genres is the subject of this work. It examines the execution narratives found in chronicles, songs, martyrologies, diaries, pamphlets, and personal correspondence written from the fourteenth through the seventeenth century in England. In particular it explores the ways in which the changing culture of late medieval and early modern England influenced the descriptions of these events.;This project moves beyond the previous historiography which has confined the scope of its analysis to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and is thus able to explore changes that take place in the discourse of the scaffold which have not previously been addressed. Through its examination of execution narratives in multiple genres it also illustrates that the last dying speech in England was not as monolithic in its form, nor as submissive in its content, as has been described. Finally, this work examines the role of the body in these texts as it functioned as a symbol within the religious context of the culture.;At the center of this analysis is the impact of the ars moriendi on the discourse of the scaffold. From the late medieval texts in which the condemned was denied the opportunity for a good death, to the sixteenth century narratives that are modelled on the ars moriendi, ending in the late seventeenth century when the narrators shifted their focus from how the condemned man died to how he lived, this work explores the impact of the cultural imperative to die well on the discourse of the scaffold.;It also examines the ways in which the religious and political crises of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries forced the authors of these texts to rework familiar rhetorical strategies in order to craft a message specific to their confessional, political, and social position. Along the way the power of the ars moriendi to define the discourse of the scaffold was eroded by the crisis of truth that was a product of the religious and political conflict of early modern England.