Project F03: Threat discourse in sermons and plays of the late middle ages and the early modern era
Abstract
Project F03 sets out to examine such sermons and plays as were accorded a wide reception spanning the better part of three centuries (14 -17th). These sources are assessed in terms of their status as threat discourses. Three threat scenarios are treated: 'Eternal damnation at the Last Judgment', 'Jewish conspiracies’, and ‘Exposure of confessional heresy.' The issue to be clarified, in light of the above, is the extent to which diverse schemata (linguistic-textual, rhetorical-theatrical, and religious-social) are discernibly at work in the construction first of a threat per se, then of strategies of mobilization designed to counter the threat.