Representing Elizabeth in Stuart England
Literature, History, Sovereignty

Watkins traces the development of Elizabeth I's iconic significance in the political and popular imagination of the seventeenth century.

John Watkins (Author)

9780521118965, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 3 September 2009

282 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.42 kg

'… luminous and intricate study … Representing Elizabeth is lively, layered, and very learned, as intensely engaged with current discussions about Stuart sexual politics and theories of nostalgia as with period debates about the prerogatives of kings.' Modern Philology

This is the first book to examine Elizabeth I's lasting impact on the Anglo-American historical imagination. John Watkins attributes her abiding popularity to her iconic role in seventeenth-century debates over the nature of sovereignty. Watkins focuses on England's most turbulent century because it witnessed the consolidation of enduring attitudes toward both the Tudor past and the English monarchy. He explains that seventeenth-century representations of Elizabeth intersected with the period's wider debate over the sovereign's relationship to the people. He goes on to trace the development of Elizabeth's iconic significance as the century moves on; the stories of Princess Elizabeth's sufferings under Mary Tudor, or of her secret longings for Essex eventually figured more prominently in the popular imagination than records of her relationships with Parliament. By the early eighteenth century Elizabeth had acquired a new value as a model of the tragic individual pitted against a hostile social order.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. James I and the fictions of Elizabeth's motherhood
2. The Queen of royal citizens: Elizabeth in Thomas Heywood's historical imagination
3. Arcana Reginae: Tacitean Narrations of the Elizabethan past
4. Recollections of Elizabeth during the civil wars and interregnum
5. Restoration Elizabeth
6. 'Under the name of a Vergin or Maiden Queen'
7. Gloriana's Secrets: the restoration invention of Elizabeth's private life
8. After the revolution: Gloriana in late Stuart England
Conclusion.

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