Milesian Rewritings of the Annunciation to the Virgin in ‘The Martyr’s Crown’ via Petronius, Dante, and Shakespeare

Abstract

Reading ‘The Martyr’s Crown’ as a parody of the Biblical Annunciation to the Virgin Mary, this article presents a previously unrecognised intertextual source to which the title of Brian Nolan’s story alludes: the liturgy of the Roman Catholic mass celebrated on the memorial day of Our Lady of Sorrows. As will be shown, this liturgical source serves as a key for an additional cluster of three interrelated literary echoes in Nolan’s short story. First, ‘The Martyr’s Crown’ is discussed as an ironic rewriting of the Biblical Annunciation story via the Mock-Marian imagery featured in the Paolo and Francesca da Rimini episode of the Divina Commedia – an indecent story or fabliau inserted in Dante’s epic framework. Secondly, Nolan’s tale is examined as a rewriting of the Biblical Annunciation story via Ophelia-related passages from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Thirdly, the story is approached as a rewriting of the ancient tradition of the naughty Milesian tale, as reflected in the ‘Widow of Ephesus’ episode inserted in Petronius’s Satyricon. Within the frame of ‘The Martyr’s Crown,’ the fabliaux- and Milesian tale-inspired mockery of the Biblical Annunciation to the Virgin recurs in the embedded narrative of the widow Mrs Clougherty told by the unreliable narrator Mr Toole. Finally, the article shows how this intertextual cluster is queered in the narrative situation of ‘The Martyr’s Crown.’

Keywords

• Brian Nolan
• 'The Martyr's Crown'
• Our Lady of Sorrows
• Annunciation to the Virgin Mary
• Dante
• William Shakespeare