New Books Network John Kuhn, "Making Pagans: Theatrical Practice and Comparative Religion in Early Modern England" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
Mar 27, 2026
John Kuhn, an associate professor of English who studies early modern drama, discusses theatrical portrayals of pagan ritual in seventeenth-century England. He traces recurring stage set pieces like oracles, triumphs, and conjurations across playwrights. The conversation follows how those theatrical tropes moved into colonial contexts and shaped the emerging category of paganism.
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Discovering Pagans In Aphra Behn
- John Kuhn first noticed pagan set pieces while reading Aphra Behn's The Widow Ranter, where Algonquin dancers mirror Roman altar scenes.
- That parallel pushed him to trace recycled stage rituals like altars, conjurations, triumphs, and mass suicides across 17th-century plays.
Stage Set Pieces Shape Pagan Imaginaries
- Each chapter traces a single theatrical set piece (altar, triumph, suicide, conjuration) across the whole 17th century to show continuity and change.
- These stage shorthands move from Rome/Persia to colonial contexts, becoming tools to depict distant peoples as uniformly pagan.
From Classical Tropes To Colonial Demonization
- Theatrical pagan tropes were exported into plays about Africa and the Americas, importing classical rituals to represent indigenous religion.
- Over the century those depictions grew more negative, linking pagan ritual to barbarity and false belief.
