Catholic-Protestant Conflict

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

A House Divided: Catholic-Protestant Conflict in Literature and Media Four centuries after Luther famously nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, literary and artistic representations of the Catholic-Protestant conflicts that shook Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are more popular than ever. From Hilary Mantel’s bestseller Wolf Hall to popular TV series such as Reign and The Tudors, dramas that chronicle the confessional conflicts of early modern Europe continue to fascinate audiences all over the world. This course will explore and compare representations of confessional and sectarian conflict in works of literature, films, and other media from the seventeenth century to the present day, focusing in particular on Germany and Central Europe, Ireland and Great Britain, and North America. Class discussions will emphasize the following themes and questions: • Religion: How are religious differences between Catholicism, Protestantism, and other faiths defined in these texts? What theological issues do they address, and what are the real-life consequences of those issues? How are they connected with other aspects of identity such as gender, race, and class? What possibilities for reconciliation or coexistence are depicted? • Mythmaking: How do these texts contribute to the process of mythmaking (e.g., through depictions of martyrs and military heroes)? What myths are undermined or debunked? • Politics: In what ways are representations of confessional conflict used to work through questions about legitimation, rule of law, democracy, and the modern state? • Aesthetics: How do these texts link Catholicism and Protestantism with specific aesthetic regimes, visual and auditory cultures, and art forms? Do these associations reflect actual historical and theological practices or simply the biases of the authors? • Genre: How do these texts exploit, expand, or subvert literary and cinematic genres (e.g., historical fiction, the costume drama)? Taught in English