Remapping Early Modern England
The Culture of Seventeenth-Century Politics

A collection of new and previously-published essays on the culture of the English Renaissance state.

Kevin Sharpe (Author)

9780521662932, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 May 2000

496 pages, 24 b/w illus.
23.6 x 15.7 x 2.9 cm, 0.905 kg

"full of sharp observations and encourage the reader to similar catholicity of reading." Albion

It is now over twenty years since revisionist history began to transform our understanding of early modern England. The debates between revisionists and their critics goes on. But it has become a sterile debate in which both sides are confined by an attenuated conception of politics. Meanwhile scholars in other disciplines have opened new approaches to the political culture of the English Renaissance state, emphasising the importance of representations of authority and reading plays, poems and portraits as texts of power. Kevin Sharpe has been at the forefront of the dialogue between historians and critics, and a leading exponent of interdisciplinary approaches. In the essays collected here, and in an important new remapping of the field, he revisits earlier debates and urges a 'cultural turn' that will refigure our understanding of the history and politics of early modern England and the materials and methods of our study.

Preface
Directions: 1. Remapping early modern England: from revisionism to the culture of politics
2. A commonwealth of meanings: languages, analogues, ideas and politics
Texts and Power: 3. The king's writ: royal authors and royal authority in early modern England
4. Private conscience and public duty in the writings of James VI and I
5. Private conscience and public duty in the writings of Charles I
Visions and Politics: 6. Stuart monarchy and political culture
7. 'An image doting rabble': the failure of republicanism culture in seventeenth-century England
Rewritings: 8. Rewriting the history of Parliament in seventeenth-century England
9. Rewriting Sir Robert Cotton: politics and history in early Stuart England
Re-Viewings: 10. Religion, rhetoric and revolution in seventeenth-century England
11. Celebrating a cultural turn: political culture and cultural politics in early modern England
12. Representations and negotiations: images, texts and authority in early modern England.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]