2011/01/01 by Claire Gheeraert–Graffeuille · 1 citation
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Arts and Humanities · #Historical Economic and Social Studies #Reformation and Early Modern Christianity #History of Emotions Research #Interregnum #Royalist #Tragedy (event) #Drama #Passions #Narrative #Parliament #Politics #Contradiction #Literature #History #Ideology #Aesthetics #Law #Art #Philosophy #Political science #Epistemology
paper · doi:10.4000/episteme.430
published in Études Épistémè 20 (Institut du Monde Anglophone)
openalex publication_date 2011/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
This article explores the generic proximity between history and drama in the Interregnum and Restoration histories of the English civil wars. It first looks at the way historians – whether on the king’s or on the Parliament’s side – appropriated the ingredients of tragedy in order to structure their narratives of the regicide and characterize their protagonists. Then, it examines the ambivalent use of theatrical emotion in royalist histories. To be sure, stirring up the passions of the readers was an effective way of persuading them of the justness of the royalist cause, but at the same time this use of pathos stood in contradiction with historical impartiality. It would be unfair, however, to consider such a theatrical presentation of history merely as an instrument of political propaganda; on the contrary, historical narratives could serve a truly tragic vision of history, conferring complexity on an act often related in a Manichean way in the 1650s and at the Restoration.