Due radazioni di una lettera del Diavolo per Elisabetta I d'Inghilterra? : strategie di espressione del dissenso tra escatologia e demonismo (1587-1603)

In the last decades of Elizabeth I's reign (1558-1603), the tension between Catholics and members of the newly founded Church of England escalated. This fostered the development of distinctive strategies for the expression of dissent which stemmed from a political climate dominated by eschatological and demonic references. The present article takes its cue from a recent essay by Rita Maria Comanducci on a Devil's letter addressed to the English sovereign and analyses an inedited copy of this epistle that the author found in a German manuscript.

Through the comparison of several passages and the edition of both texts in the appendix, the paper intends to demonstrate that the two letters are separate versions of the same text, drafted twenty years apart in a profoundly different political climate. The version in the German manuscript is more extensive and is harsher on Elizabeth I, whose religious policy the anonymous author openly criticises with a possible reference to the execution of Mary Stuart in 1587. The present contribution also intends to contextualise this Devil's letter within the literary climate of the time and addresses the reasons for the choice of this medium by means of a diachronic analysis which recalls the medieval antecedents of politically-engaged fictitious epistolography. [Publisher's text]