Royal Voices at Prayer in Early Modern English Texts: a pragmastylistic exploration of religious discourse

Abstract: Linguistic literature on English religious discourse, and in particular pragmatic research focusing on the 'voice in action', is scarce and only recently have scholars begun to speak of 'theolinguistics'.  Through the tools of pragmalinguistics and literary criticism, my lecture will address issues related to the representation of early modern English royal prayers. How does a Renaissance ruler speak to God?  If we consider the act of prayer as the verbal and spiritual meeting point between a humble sinner and his Creator, a moment in which the worshipper and his God engage in a private dialogue, the voice of a sovereign represents a special case and raises several questions. What might it mean for a Rex absolutus to enact the (linguistic and) spiritual forms of submission that prayers conventionally entail? As such, religious texts will also be an important contribution to the exploration of the link between religious and political discourse.

Donatella Montini (Full Professor of English Language and Translation at Sapienza University of Rome) graduated from Sapienza University of Rome in 1982. She holds an MA in Modern Philology (1988) and a Ph.D. in English Literature, which was awarded in 1995 by the Universities of Pisa and Florence. She has taught English Language and Translation at the University of Rome Sapienza since 2005. She teaches History of English, Stylistics, Political Discourse (undergraduate, MA, PhD students). Chief Editor of Memoria di Shakespeare A Journal of Shakespearean Studies. She is a member of the editorial board of Fictions. In 2021 she was selected as Plumer Visiting Fellow in Early Modern Studies (St. Anne's College, Oxford) with a project on the Elizabethan translator John Florio.  Her research interests and areas of specialization follow three main lines of development: stylistics and narratology; Shakespearean and early modern studies; political discourse, in a synchronic and diachronic perspective .She has published extensively on Shakespeare, early modern English multilingualism, language teaching and translation, with special regard to the Elizabeth linguist and translator  John Florio. She has recently authored a volume on contemporary stylistics (La stilistica inglese contemporanea. Teorie e metodi, 2020), co-edited a book on standard and non standard English in fictional texts (The Dialects of British English in Fictional Texts, 2021) and on Queen Elizabeth I’s language and style (Elizabeth I in Writing. Language, Power and Representation in Early Modern England, 2018).