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The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, and Representation
As a woman wielding public authority, Elizabeth I embodied a paradox at the very center of sixteenth-century patriarchal English society. Louis Montrose’s long-awaited book, The Subject of Elizabeth, illuminates the ways in which the Queen and her subjects variously exploited or obfuscated this contradiction.
Montrose offers a masterful account of the texts, pictures, and performances in which the Queen was represented to her people, to her court, to foreign powers, and to Elizabeth herself. Retrieving this “Elizabethan imaginary” in all its richness and fascination, Montrose presents a sweeping new account of Elizabethan political culture. Along the way, he explores the representation of Elizabeth within the traditions of Tudor dynastic portraiture; explains the symbolic manipulation of Elizabeth’s body by both supporters and enemies of her regime; and considers how Elizabeth’s advancing age provided new occasions for misogynistic subversions of her royal charisma.
This book, the remarkable product of two decades of study by one of our most respected Renaissance scholars, will be welcomed by all historians, literary scholars, and art historians of the period.
Montrose offers a masterful account of the texts, pictures, and performances in which the Queen was represented to her people, to her court, to foreign powers, and to Elizabeth herself. Retrieving this “Elizabethan imaginary” in all its richness and fascination, Montrose presents a sweeping new account of Elizabethan political culture. Along the way, he explores the representation of Elizabeth within the traditions of Tudor dynastic portraiture; explains the symbolic manipulation of Elizabeth’s body by both supporters and enemies of her regime; and considers how Elizabeth’s advancing age provided new occasions for misogynistic subversions of her royal charisma.
This book, the remarkable product of two decades of study by one of our most respected Renaissance scholars, will be welcomed by all historians, literary scholars, and art historians of the period.
- GenresHistory
336 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2006
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June 25, 2016
In this 2006 exploration of the representation of Elizabeth in her own time, Montrose takes a cross-disciplinary approach and considers texts, images (including the royal portraits) as well as more popular manifestations such as pamphlets, letters, rumour and gossip.
Situtuating the book within the field constructed by scholars such as Yates, Strong, Greenblatt and Frye, this explores the C16th cultural contradiction that had a woman in a position of authority and considers the way in which gender contestation and the manipulation of images of the female body are themselves involved in and involve this break in the gender logic of the time.
Montrose takes a more or less chronological view of the queen's representations, from the images of political legitimacy which surround her accession, so the problematics of the ageing queen in the last decade of her reign (1590s).
This is a necessary book which pulls together the strands of recent scholarship and blends them into a coherent narrative. I don't think it breaks new ground but it is a fine addition to the work done on the cultural discourse that surrounded the queen and her inevitably female body.
Situtuating the book within the field constructed by scholars such as Yates, Strong, Greenblatt and Frye, this explores the C16th cultural contradiction that had a woman in a position of authority and considers the way in which gender contestation and the manipulation of images of the female body are themselves involved in and involve this break in the gender logic of the time.
Montrose takes a more or less chronological view of the queen's representations, from the images of political legitimacy which surround her accession, so the problematics of the ageing queen in the last decade of her reign (1590s).
This is a necessary book which pulls together the strands of recent scholarship and blends them into a coherent narrative. I don't think it breaks new ground but it is a fine addition to the work done on the cultural discourse that surrounded the queen and her inevitably female body.
Displaying 1 of 1 review