caa a22 4500 463200349 CHVBK 20180405153110.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170326e20071001xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s11061-007-9025-4 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s11061-007-9025-4 Hila Marina Department of Political Science, School of Social Sciences, University of Crete, University Campus, 74 100, Rethymno, Greece aut "Justice shall never heare ye, I am justice”: absolutist rape and cyclical history in John Fletcher's The Tragedy of Valentinian [Elektronische Daten] [Marina Hila] The Tragedy of Valentinian (1610-1614), a solo work by John Fletcher, is a sophisticated study in the implications of divine right monarchy and its dangerous potentialities. The relationship between divine right and political justice lies at the heart of the play. The king embodies the law, but justice is not identified with it: justice is rather the equitable application of the law. Lucina's rape by the Roman emperor Valentinian takes place because of political arrangements that allow impunity and unaccountability to the monarch on the grounds of divine sanction. Absolutism is represented as part of a patriarchal mindset, so the rape is a sexual as well as a political crime. Linguistic and perceptual chaos ensues as a result of absolutist subjectivity: Valentinian's rhetoric of divine right is exposed as a fiction at the service of expediency. Throughout, the play interweaves the language of theology, which treats monarchical power as divine and therefore unlimited, with the language of politics, evoking justice and the law to suggest the necessity of limitations at a political level. The numerous references to historical precedents and personages indicate that forms of belief, including divine right, tend to set historical patterns from which it is impossible to escape. The conclusion to the play denies closure, suggesting that as long as the political order relies on divine right absolutism, history is bound to repeat itself. Springer Science+Business Media, Inc., 2007 Fletcher, John, 1579-1625 nationallicence Criticism and interpretation nationallicence Historical context nationallicence Divine right nationallicence Political theory nationallicence Neophilologus Springer Netherlands 91/4(2007-10-01), 745-758 0028-2677 91:4<745 2007 91 11061 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-007-9025-4 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-007-9025-4 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Hila Marina Department of Political Science, School of Social Sciences, University of Crete, University Campus, 74 100, Rethymno, Greece aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Neophilologus Springer Netherlands 91/4(2007-10-01), 745-758 0028-2677 91:4<745 2007 91 11061 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer