Thiel College English faculty member has book chapter published

Posted April 28, 2022 Print

GREENVILLE, Pa.-- Thiel College Professor of English Jared Johnson, Ph.D. published a book chapter in the essay collection Performativity of Villainy and Evil in Anglophone Literature and Media.

Performativity of Villainy and Evil in Anglophone Literature and Media examines the performance of evil across a wide range of genres including drama, film, and television. Organized chronologically, the collection spans from the medieval period to the present. The book comprises 27 chapters with topics ranging from evil in the 15th-century morality play “Everyman” to postmodern modes of evil in the films “American Psycho” (2000) and “Joker” (2019).

Johnson’s chapter, “Villains of the High Seas: Apostasy and Piracy in George Peele’s ‘The Battle of Alcazar,’ the anonymously authored ‘Captain Thomas Stukeley,’ and William Daborne’s ‘A Christian Turned Turk’ examines the performance of evil through the depiction of pirates in English plays during the Elizabethan and Jacobean era. In the chapter, Johnson contends that at the same time that the concept of the devil pact grew in the public’s imagination, another perceived threat to English spiritual life began to take hold: the apostate pirate. George Peele’s “The Battle of Alcazar” (1588-89), the anonymously authored “Captain Thomas Stukeley” (1595), and William Daborne’s “A Christian Turned Turk” (1609-12) portray the performance of villainy through a new vice—one that tempts their Christian sailors to renounce their faith, convert to Islam, and live the pirate’s life.

The collection is edited by Nizar Zouidi and is published by Palgrave Macmillan (2021).