Bad Queen Bess?

Libels, Secret Histories and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I
Erscheinungsjahr 2016
ISBN: 978-0-19-875399-5
Verlag: Oxford University Press(UK)

Buch, Englisch, 510 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 928 g

Bad Queen Bess? analyses the back and forth between the Elizabethan regime and various Catholic critics, who, from the early 1570s to the early 1590s, sought to characterise that regime as a conspiracy of evil counsel. Through a genre novel - the libellous secret history - to English political discourse, various (usually anonymous) Catholic authors claimed to reveal to the public what was 'really happening' behind the curtain of official lies and disinformation with which the clique of evil counsellors at the heart of the Elizabethan state habitually cloaked their sinister manoeuvres. Elements within the regime, centred on William Cecil and his circle, replied to these assaults with their own species of plot talk and libellous secret history, specialising in conspiracy-driven accounts of the Catholic, Marian, and then, latterly, Spanish threats.

Peter Lake presents a series of (mutually constitutive) moves and counter moves, in the course of which the regime's claims to represent a form of public political virtue, to speak for the commonweal and true religion, elicited from certain Catholic critics a simply inverted rhetoric of private political vice, persecution, and tyranny. The resulting exchanges are read not only as a species of 'political thought', but as a way of thinking about politics as process and of distinguishing between 'politics' and 'religion'. They are also analysed as modes of political communication and pitch-making - involving print, circulating manuscripts, performance, and rumour - and thus as constitutive of an emergent mode of 'public politics' and perhaps of a 'post reformation public sphere'. While the focus is primarily English, the origins and imbrication of these texts within, and their direct address to, wider European events and audiences is always present. The aim is thus to contribute simultaneously to the political, cultural, intellectual, and religious histories of the period.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lake, Peter

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religion & Politik, Religionsfreiheit
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction

- Part I: The Marian moment

- 1: Libelous politics and the paradoxes of publicity: the case/s for and against Mary Stuart

- 2: Plots, pamphlets, and parliament

- 3: The Treatise of treasons in context/s

- Part II: The Catholic loyalist moment

- 4: The Anjou match and its consequences

- 5: Getting your retaliation in first: Leicester's commonwealth in context

- 6: Challenge and response: Leslie, Allen, Parsons and the Catholic origins of the 'monarchical republic of Elizabeth I'

- Part III: Burghley's commonwealth

- 7: 'Monarchical republicanism', or the vain pursuit of Burghley's commonwealth

- 8: Replying in practise and in theory: the strange fate of William Parry and a very long tract by Thomas Bilson

- 9: Beyond monarchical republicanism

- Part IV: Rogue states and universal monarchs

- 10: How to answer a libel, or French pamphlets and English politics

- 11: Going Papal

- Part V: The regicidal moment

- 12: Killing a queen, and its consequences

- 13: Burghley (and the queen) tell the world what they really think

- Part VI: Resistance and compromise?

- 14: Evil counsel - again

- 15: Religion/politics, politics/religion

- Part VII: Ripostes and replies

- 16: How (not) to answer a libel

- 17: Plots, pamphlets and plays, or the return of plot talk and the tragi-comic fate of Dr Lopez

- Conclusion

Über Autor(innen)

Peter Lake completed his undergraduate degree and PhD at Cambridge University and taught subsequently at Bedford College, Royal Holloway, Bedford New College, London, Cornell, and Princeton. He moved to Vanderbilt University in 2008. When in London he is an habitual attender of seminars at the Institute of Historical Research, and has been the grateful beneficiary of extended stints at both the Folger Shakespeare and Huntington Libraries.