Synopses & Reviews
As a woman wielding public authority, Elizabeth I embodied a paradox at the very center of sixteenth-century patriarchal English society.and#160;Louis Montroseand#8217;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.and#160;Retrieving this and#8220;Elizabethan imaginaryand#8221; in all its richness and fascination, Montrose presents a sweeping new account of Elizabethan political culture.and#160; Along the way, he explores the representation of Elizabeth within the traditions of Tudor dynastic portraiture; explains the symbolic manipulation of Elizabethand#8217;s body by both supporters and enemies of her regime; and considers how Elizabethand#8217;s advancing age provided new occasions for misogynistic subversions of her royal charisma.and#160;and#160;
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.
About the Author
Louis Montrose is professor of literature at the University of California, San Diego, and author of The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeare and the Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan Theatre, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
A Note on Quotations from Early Modern Texts
Introduction: Foundations and Trajectoriesand#160;
Part 1 - Dynasty and Difference
1. Contested Legitimacies
2. Filial Emulation
3. The Tudor Sisterhood
4. The Protestant Successionand#160;
Part 2 - Idolatries
5. Imagery, Policy, and Belief
6. Iconomachy
7. Instrumental Adoration
8. A Cult of Elizabeth?and#160;
Part 3 - Queen and Country
9. The Geopolitical Imaginary
10. Policy in Pictures
11. Purity and Danger
Part 4 - Resistances
12. Vox Populi
13. Defacing the Queen
14. Secrets of the Heart
Part 5 - Time's Subject
15. A Queen of Shadows
16. Mysteries of State
17. Through the Looking Glass
Epilogue: The Jacobean Phoenix
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index