Totus adest oculis? Approaching euhemerism in Ben Jonson, His Part of King James His Royal and Magnificent Entertainment, 1604

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

Ben Jonson’s tendentious euhemerism is able to orchestrate an avowedly panegyrical apotheosis for James that is an oblique textual divinization, creating the conditions for James to surpass the divinity of the emperor gods of pagan Rome without hubristically infringing on the divinity of Christian God. There is the Ben Jonson ‘within’ the text, who makes his virtuous king a god - but from a new euhemerist perspective, also the Euhemerus contextualized, standing outside the frame, and offering clues to the fiction of making James a god. Thomas Dekker would go on to publish ‘the authorized’ narrative as The Magnificent Entertainment Given to King James - a text that sits in interesting and barbed counterpoint to Jonson - and the architect Harrison would publish an illustrated festival book, the first of its kind in English. Jonson, deliberately, it seems, gazumping Dekker by publishing first, offers a very different vision of the day.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationEuhemerism and its uses
Subtitle of host publicationthe mortal gods
EditorsSyrithe Pugh
Place of PublicationAbingdon, Oxon
PublisherRoutledge Taylor & Francis Group
Chapter8
Pages203-218
Number of pages16
ISBN (Electronic)9781003094760
ISBN (Print)9780367556990
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 18 Mar 2021

Publication series

NameRoutledge studies in Renaissance and early modern worlds of knowledge
Volume19

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