scholarly journals Fashioning the Queen - Elizabeth I as Patron of Translations

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-145
Author(s):  
Oana-Alis Zaharia
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Queen Elizabeth I ◽  
Cultural Implications

Abstract The present paper aims to explore the role of Queen Elizabeth I as literary patron and dedicatee of translations by focusing on the dedication that precedes Geoffrey Fenton’s rendering of Francesco Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia. Fenton’s extensive dedication to the Queen is extremely revealing of the manner in which the system of patronage was understood in Elizabethan England. Moreover, it facilitates our understanding of the translator’s role and position at the Elizabethan court, of the political and cultural implications of choosing the Queen as the patron of a translation.

“Communis Hostis Omnium”: The Smerwick Massacre (1580) and the Law of Nations

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Alan Orr
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Present State ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Queen Elizabeth I ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
Common Enemy ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article examines the brutal massacre of up to six hundred Spanish and Italian papal troops on the order of the English Lord Deputy Arthur Grey, 14th Baron de Wilton (1536–1593), at Dún An Óir (Forto del Oro), Smerwick, County Kerry, on 10 November 1580. The article investigates the relationship between the religious and juridical rationales for the massacre, shedding new light on the broader relationship between the early modern law of nations, Protestantism, and what Brendan Bradshaw has characterized as “catastrophic violence” in the Elizabethan military conquest of Ireland. While Vincent Carey has emphasized the virulently anti-Catholic character of Grey's rationales for the massacre, my argument instead emphasizes the role of the received laws of nations and of war in justifying Grey's actions both to Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603) and to the English public, from the period immediately following the massacre until the writing of Edmund Spenser's pro-Grey apologetic, A View of the Present State of Ireland (ca. 1596). On this view, the papal troops at Smerwick were considered brigands, pirates, or, in Marcus Tullius Cicero's words, “communis hostis omnium”—a common enemy to all—and enjoyed no standing as lawful enemies under the law of nations. In the sixteenth century, the established law of nations was hardly a seamless web but manifested significant cleavages and fissures allowing for the construction of localized spheres of legal exception in which the ordinary rules of warfare did not apply, thus providing a convenient juridical rationale for atrocity.

Music and Late Elizabethan Politics: The Identities of Oriana and Diana

2005 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 507-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEREMY L. SMITH
Keyword(s):  
Sir Philip Sidney ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Original Intent ◽  
Queen Elizabeth I ◽  
Current Assessment ◽  
William Byrd

Abstract This essay challenges the current assessment that Thomas Morley's collection, The Triumphes of Oriana, was an uncomplicated musical tribute to Queen Elizabeth I, who was represented allegorically by Oriana, heroine of the romance Amadis de Gaule. It takes into account both the political context surrounding the Essex Revolt, the Elizabethan succession question, and the Catholic issue and the ideas reflected in the poetry that was set to music, as well as some of the music itself. It can be shown that both Morley and his mentor William Byrd were strongly linked to the Sidney/Essex complex of ideals that had a special appeal to Catholics who hoped for a more tolerant regime and who looked to Essex and a Jamesian succession as possible vehicles of salvation. Demonstrating the unsuitability of the Oriana characterization for Elizabeth, I propose a different allegorical identity not only for “Oriana” (James's wife Anna) but also for the character “Diana” (Essex's sister Penelope Rich), who appears in key works by Byrd and in all the Oriana madrigals as well. Certain songs by Byrd promoted the ideas of Sidney and his circle as well as Essex's image as the “heir to Sir Philip Sidney.” Morley's project for the Triumphes began originally, evidence shows, as a musical offering pleasing to the Essex camp and supportive of James's succession. A marked shift in political circumstances between 1600 and 1601 made it incumbent upon Morley and his collaborators to pay tribute to Elizabeth instead, but not all traces of the original intent were effaced. The ambivalence in the meaning of the Oriana and Diana allegories continued into the post-Elizabethan era.

The Limits of Obedience

2021 ◽  
pp. 201-223
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
The People ◽  
Queen Elizabeth I ◽  
Francisco Suarez ◽  
The Relationship

The murder of Henry III in 1589 plunged France further into crisis, raising questions not only of succession but also of the limits of royal power and the legitimacy of resistance. Leading figures in the French Catholic League, along with the Spanish Jesuit Juan de Mariana, defended this act of tyrannicide. Meanwhile, the ageing English queen Elizabeth I was still childless, and anxiety about the succession was exacerbated by Catholic writers, notably Robert Parsons. In these debates, appeal was made once more to the idea of ‘the people’, but now the role of clergy, kings and magistrates in transforming a multitude into a people was examined more explicitly. In response, James VI of Scotland began to defend ‘free monarchy’ and the divine right of kings; while the jurist William Barclay defended monarchy against those he called ‘monarchomachs’—Catholic and Protestant advocates of resistance. The Venetian Interdict and James’s Oath of Allegiance brought into focus the question of where sovereignty lay and the relationship between Church and state. In this context, the Jesuit Francisco Suarez offered a series of texts which not only reaffirmed papal indirect power but were also designed to make sense of the Christian’s relationship to the civil and ecclesiastical authorities and to provide effective, authoritative counsel for Christian souls.

Theagnus dei, Catholic devotion, and confessional politics in early modern England

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aislinn Muller
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Political ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Critical Part ◽  
Sacred Objects

After 1571 Catholic sacred objects were outlawed in England, and the possession of such objects could be prosecuted under the statute ofpraemunire. Despite this prohibition sacred objects including rosaries, blessed beads, and theagnus dei(wax pendants blessed by the pope) remained a critical part of Catholic devotion. This article examines the role of theagnus deiin English Catholic communities and the unique political connotations it acquired during the reign of Elizabeth I. It assesses the uses of these sacramentals in Catholic missions to England, their reception amongst Catholics, and the political significance of theagnus deiin light of the papal excommunication of Elizabeth I in 1570.

Spectres of Female Sovereignty in Shakespeare’s Plays

2016 ◽  
pp. 111-130
Author(s):  
Susan Frye
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Female Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
The Winter's Tale ◽  
Henry V ◽  
Winter's Tale

Spectres of historical queens in several of Shakespeare’s plays recall the political importance not only of queens themselves, but of the vexed issue of sovereignty as it was gendered in early modern political thought. Representations of and allusions to Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots in Henry V, Henry VIII, and The Winter’s Tale expose the strategies through which actual queens as well as their supporters authorized and defended early modern female sovereignty. At the same time, because female sovereignty rests on the connection between the female body and the political body, definitions of female sovereignty remain unstable, capable of both reinforcing and disrupting the connection. When Shakespeare creates his historical and fictional queens, he raises their spectres as untimely versions of female sovereignty as well as the uncanny role of the female body in representing time itself.

scholarly journals ‘Who Is’t can Read a Woman?’: Representation of Queen Elizabeth I in Cymbeline

MANUSYA ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Thanomnual Hiranyatheb
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
James I ◽  
Queen Elizabeth I ◽  
Cultural Forces ◽  
King James I ◽  
Cultural Responses ◽  
A Site

This article is an attempt to read Cymbeline (1608-1610), one of Shakespeare’s so-called ‘final plays’ or ‘romances’ as a site of cultural responses to the remaining ‘presence’ of the late Queen Elizabeth I and her cultural associations in the context of the reign of her gender-different successor, King James I. It argues that these responses can be seen in the play’s portrayal of two characters in the play, namely the Wicked Queen and to a lesser extent, Imogen, in which the figure of the late queen is played out and marginalized, and proposes that these representations are ways in which the Jacobean culture deals with and exorcises its anxieties about the late monarch’s sometimes contradictory (self-appointed) role as a militant, powerful and inscrutable ‘woman-on-top’, which disrupted ‘natural’ gender distinction in the political climate of James I’s reign, during which pacifism, transparency and patriarchalism were highly advocated, especially by the king himself and other writers. It is hoped that this article can offer a reading of the play, not by interpreting it as a complete-in-itself and truth-reflecting work of art by a literary genius according to the romantic-humanistic conception of the ‘author’ and ‘literature,’ but rather by taking into accounts political, social and cultural forces that were circulated during the time of composition and reception of the play and with which it interacted.

The 'pair of straight bodies' and 'a pair of drawers' dating from 1603 which Clothe the Effigy of Queen Elizabeth I in Westminster Abbey

Costume ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Arnold
Keyword(s):  
Full Scale ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Page Size ◽  
Queen Elizabeth I ◽  
Materials Used

Janet Arnold left this paper virtually complete at her death in 1998. It is an important piece of work to which she had given a substantial amount of time, but it does not fit with her plans for the forthcoming volume of Patterns of Fashion: The Cut and Construction of Linen Clothes for Men and Women. However, because of the rarity of the 'pair of straight bodies' and the need to make the fruits of her research available to others, it was decided to follow Janet's own practice with one-off items of importance and to submit the article to Costume. Janet's full-scale pattern of the 'pair of straight bodies' has been scaled down to fit the page size of Costume, otherwise all the descriptions and queries are Janet's own, as are the drawings and photographs chosen to illustrate her text. She continued to work on the project after she had written the first draft text; consequently two references have been added to clarify the role of John Colte, and to illustrate the silk materials used to cover the 'bodies' made for the queen by William Jones.

William III and the Negative Voice

1987 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 509-525
Author(s):  
James Jay Carafano
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
Queen Elizabeth I ◽  
Full Analysis ◽  
William Iii ◽  
Right To Refuse ◽  
The Revolution

A fresh interpretation of King William III's employment of the royal veto provides new insights into the political and constitutional issues of his reign. The veto, or the crown's negative voice as it was called by contemporaries, is a particularly fruitful subject for study in charting the course of politics in seventeenth century England. The employment of the veto offers an accurate barometer for measuring political and constitutional change. It addresses the key issue of sovereignty—who makes law? King or Parliament? It is surprising, therefore, that historians have neglected to examine the implications of William's employment of the veto. As a result, their conclusions about the veto are not supported by a full analysis of the available evidence. What they have overlooked is that a close examination of the bills the king rejected, and of contemporary views of the royal prerogative, demonstrates that underneath the turmoil of Williamite politics lay a stable foundation built on the settlement achieved at the Revolution of 1688/9.During his brief rule William III rejected a significant number of bills. Between 1692 and 1696 he vetoed five public bills: the Judges, Royal Mines, Triennial, Place, and MP Qualifications Bills. Previous Tudor and Stuart monarchs, with the exception of Queen Elizabeth I, only infrequently invoked the crown's right to refuse legislation. Queen Anne, who followed William to the throne, vetoed only one bill. She was the last monarch to employ this prerogative, although it remains theoretically a legitimate royal power.

On Metaphysics and the Political: A Polemics of Reading Baudelaire in the 1930s

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.

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