While reading a late-Victorian hack biography of William Tyndale, it suddenly occurred to me that there was an odd hole in Victorian fictions of the Reformation. The novels, plays, and short stories in question all depend on John Foxe's Acts and Monuments--in fact, they're positively parasitic on it (and many of them downright plagiarize it). But I cannot recall John Foxe ever apppearing as a character in any of the fictions I've read, and I've read...quite a few of them. There are novels about or prominently featuring Luther, Knox, Calvin, Zwingli, and Tyndale, but no Foxe anywhere, not even as a teensy-weensy supporting character. Given that everybody else pops in from time to time (I recently tripped over Peter Martyr), surely somebody must have shoehorned him in somewhere. Although I suppose, in a very loose sense, Foxe is "in" these texts...
Very interesting observation - there's a good novel there too. Somebody coaxing Foxe into writing his book for the greater good of the nation.
Posted by: Demmy | October 01, 2008 at 03:24 AM
Is there a modern one? If not, I look forward to reading yours.
Posted by: Marya | October 01, 2008 at 05:27 PM