Retelling Silence, Rewriting Experience: Production and Reproduction of Anne Askew's Examinations

The essay examines two different editions of Anne Askew's Examinations published in the sixteenth century: John Bale's the First Examination and the Latter Examination and John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, and argues that retelling and rewriting one's experience is the process of storytelling that necessitates the repetition and communication of the experience. The essay looks at the parts the sixteenth-century editors particularly rewrote or retold the original version, and discusses how Askew's story was retold, repeated, and communicated through various storytellers who delivered not only the original text but also the original experience toward larger audience. While attempting to interpret, analyze, and expand on the story she did not tell, or the story she could not tell, Bale and Foxe developed her personal and anecdotal story into a communal narrative to share. Bale wrote a weak woman's martyrology by adding his interpretation and analysis, showing the way for the readers to follow in understanding her enigmatic silence and gestures. On the other hand, Foxe made the story a more dramatic and more seamlessly flowing narrative of the heroic sacrifice of a martyr. Foxe filled the room left by Askew's silence with directly quoted conversations and the graphic that could help explain what was between the lines. Apart from the rewritings of the reformists, the essay focuses on the fact that the editing, rearranging, and reinterpreting process already started with Askew's own writing. Although Askew declares herself an objective recorder of the series of events, her writing is carefully constructed with complex ideological fractures and rhetorical tactics, and her experience is tailored to fit a particular purpose. Along with Bale's and Foxe's rewritings, Askew's story of a reading woman should be also read as an intentional and interpretative storytelling on her own experience.