This book traces some of the cross-currents in Elizabethan culture, investigating ambiguities within literature which apparently praises the Queen, and the diverse meanings of descriptions of Elizabeth as a saint or goddess. It also considers both the Virgin Queen and the Virgin Mary in terms of the history of representations of gender, sexuality and power.

The subject of this book by one of the Church of England's most respected Anglo-Catholic priests could hardly be more central. The rekindling of devotion to Mary has been one of the many gifts of the Catholic movement to the Church of England, and there are few better exponents of it than Roger Greenacre. He was keen to foster a greater appreciation of Mary among Anglicans, as part of a renewed emphasis on the Church of England's catholic identity and relationship with the wider Church. He traces the way that Mary has been perceived throughout Anglican history, from patterns of Marian devotion in the Middle Ages to her portrayal in today's liturgical texts, and examines her role in ecumenical dialogue. In a selection of homilies he presents Mary to an Anglican and ecumenical audience. The book opens with a biographical account of Roger Greenacre's life and work by his literary executor, Colin Podmore.

This work marks the 400th anniversary of the death of one of England's greatest monarchs, a highly intelligent and successful ruler. The volume appeals to everyone interested in the charismatic character of Elizabeth I, her time and cultural afterlife. Contributors focus on important aspects of Elizabeth's subtle and resourceful political power and the longstanding struggle she faced at home and abroad as well as the threats posed to her realm. This edition presents a series of essays about fictional representations of Queen Elizabeth I in literature, music, and film. Articles illuminate the fascinating story of her numerous afterlives and their significance for the cultural history of England, its sense of identity and psyche. Essays investigate the ceremony, festivities, and dance practices at her court and bring to life the cultural significance of this colorful and extraordinary monarch. Christa Jansohn is professor of British culture at the University of Bamberg, Germany.

This study explores representations of the Madonna and Child in early modern culture. It considers the mother and son as a conceptual, religio-political unit and examines the ways in which that unit was embodied and performed. Of primary interest is the way mothers derived agency from bearing incipient rulers.

Mothers and meaning on the early modern English stage is a study of the dramatised mother figure in English drama from the mid-sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. It explores a range of genres: moralities, histories, romantic comedies, city comedies, domestic tragedies, high tragedies, romances and melodrama and includes close readings of plays by such diverse dramatists as Udall, Bale, Phillip, Legge, Kyd, Marlowe, Peele, Shakespeare, Middleton, Dekker and Webster. The study is enriched by reference to religious, political and literary discourses of the period, from Reformation and counter-Reformation polemic to midwifery manuals and Mother’s Legacies, the political rhetoric of Mary I, Elizabeth I and James VI, reported gallows confessions of mother convicts and Puritan conduct books. It thus offers scholars of literature, drama, art and history a unique opportunity to consider the literary, visual and rhetorical representation of motherhood in the context of a discussion of familiar and less familiar dramatic texts.

Spanning the period from Elizabeth I's reign to Charles II's restoration, this study argues the garden is a primary site evincing a progressive narrative of change, a narrative that looks to the Edenic as obtainable ideal in court politics, economic prosperity, and national identity in early modern England. In the first part of the study, Amy L. Tigner traces the conceptual forms that the paradise imaginary takes in works by Gascoigne, Spenser, and Shakespeare, all of whom depict the garden as a space in which to imagine the national body of England and the gendered body of the monarch. In the concluding chapters, she discusses the function of gardens in the literary works by Jonson, an anonymous masque playwright, and Milton, the herbals of John Gerard and John Parkinson, and the tract writing of Ralph Austen, Lawrence Beal, and Walter Blithe. In these texts, the paradise imaginary is less about the body politic of the monarch and more about colonial pursuits and pressing environmental issues. As Tigner identifies, during this period literary representations of gardens become potent discursive models that both inspire constructions of their aesthetic principles and reflect innovations in horticulture and garden technology. Further, the development of the botanical garden ushers in a new world of science and exploration. With the importation of a new world of plants, the garden emerges as a locus of scientific study: hybridization, medical investigation, and the proliferation of new ornamentals and aliments. In this way, the garden functions as a means to understand and possess the rapidly expanding globe.

Anne Boleyn may be best known for losing her head, but as Tudor expert Tracy Borman reveals in a book that recasts British history, her greatest legacy lies in the path-breaking reign of her daughter, Elizabeth Much of the fascination with Britain’s legendary Tudors centers around the dramas surrounding Henry VIII and his six wives and Elizabeth I’s rumored liaisons. Yet the most fascinating relationship in that historic era may well be that between the mother and daughter who, individually and collectively, changed the course of British history. The future Queen Elizabeth was not yet three when her mother, Anne Boleyn, was beheaded on May 19, 1536, on Henry’s order, incensed that she had not given him a son and tired of her contentious nature. Elizabeth had been raised away from court, rarely even seeing Anne; and after her death, Henry tried in every way to erase Anne’s presence and memory. At that moment in history, few could have predicted that mother and daughter would each leave enduring, and interlocked, legacies. Yet as Tracy Borman reveals in this first-ever joint portrait, both women broke the mold for British queens and for women in general at the time. Anne was instrumental in reforming and reshaping forever Britain’s religious traditions, and her years of wielding power over a male-dominated court provided an inspiring role model for Elizabeth’s glittering, groundbreaking 45-year reign. Indeed, Borman shows how much Elizabeth—most visibly by refusing to ever marry, but in many other more subtle ways that defined her court—was influenced by her mother’s legacy. In its originality, Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I sheds new light on two of history’s most famous women—the private desires, hopes, and fears that lay behind their dazzling public personas, and the surprising influence each had on the other during and after their lifetimes. In the process, Tracy Borman reframes our understanding of the entire Tudor era.

Scholars of religious, literary, and cultural history will enjoy this illuminating collection.

The first book to examine Elizabeth I as a learned princess, Learned Queen examines Elizabeth's own demonstrations of erudition alongside literary works produced by such political luminaries as Sir Philip Sidney and Robert Devereux, earl of Essex.