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Focusing on the political, intellectual, and cultural context of Englandin the early modern period (14th century to 18th century), these timelystudies explore political theory and the English Revolution, the revisionist debates over the court and the country, and the role of Laudian policies in the years prior to the Civil War. The volume also explores aristocratic rule in 17th century England as compared to that of the Polish Commonwealth, the resonance of political events in literary culture, Hobbes's theory of passions, the role of the gentle apprentice in London, and the problem of religious dissent in the 17th century. Contributors include: PAUL SEAVER, PAOLO PASQUALUCCI, WILLIAM HUNT, GORDON SCHOCKET, LINDA PECK, EDWARD HUNDERT, JOHN GUY, ANTONIO D'ANDREA, WILLIAM DRAY, JOSEPH LEVINE, PETER LAKE, DWIGHT BRAUTIGAM and BONNELYN YOUNG KUNZE.
A history of political debate and theory in England (later Britain) between the English Reformation and French Revolution.
The position of English monarchs as supreme governors of the Church of England profoundly affected early modern politics and religion. This innovative book explores how tensions in church-state relations created by Henry VIII's Reformation continued to influence relationships between the crown, Parliament and common law during the Restoration, a distinct phase in England's 'long Reformation'. Debates about the powers of kings and parliaments, the treatment of Dissenters and emerging concepts of toleration were viewed through a Reformation prism where legitimacy depended on godly status. This book discusses how the institutional, legal and ideological framework of supremacy perpetuated the language of godly kingship after 1660 and how supremacy was complicated by the ambivalent Tudor legacy. It was manipulated by not only Anglicans, but also tolerant kings and intolerant parliaments, Catholics, Dissenters and radicals like Thomas Hobbes. Invented to uphold the religious and political establishments, supremacy paradoxically ended up subverting them.
Sir John Harington (1560-1612) has long been recognized as one of the most colorful and engaging figures at the English Renaissance court. Godson of Queen Elizabeth, translator of Ariosto, and inventor of the water-closet, he was also a lively writer in a wide variety of modes, and an acute commentator on his times. Combining detailed readings and first-hand historical research, this study reconstructs the complex, often devious agenda that Harington wrote into his books as he customized them for specific individuals and occasions.
"This study analyses in detail how James fashioned and refashioned political regimes in England to further this agenda between 1603 and 1625. In so doing, it treats crown finance as a study in kingship which reveals the dynamic, sometimes fraught, interaction of political ideas and practice. By moving beyond older stereotypes and treatments of crown finance as an institutional topic, Dr. Cramsie provides fundamental insights into James himself and into his personal rule."--BOOK JACKET.
Constance Jordan looks at how Shakespeare, through his romances, contributed to the cultural debates over the nature of monarchy in Jacobean England. Stressing the differences between absolutist and constitutionalist principles of rule, Jordan reveals Shakespeare's investment in the idea that a head of state should be responsive to law, and not be governed by his unbridled will. Conflicts within royal courts which occur in the romances show wives, daughters, and servants resisting tyrannical husbands, fathers, masters, and monarchs by relying on the authority of conscience. These loyal subjects demonstrated to Shakespeare's diverse audiences that the vitality of the body politic, its dynastic future, and its material productivity depend on a cooperative union of ruler and subject. Drawing on representations of servitude and slavery in the humanist and political literature of the period, Jordan shows that Shakespeare's abusive rulers suffer as much as they impose on their subjects. Shakespeare's Monarchies recognizes the romances as politically inflected texts and confirms Shakespeare's involvement in the public discourse of the period.
The influence exercised by Queen Henrietta Maria over her husband Charles I during the English Civil Wars, has long been a subject of interest. To many of her contemporaries, especially those sympathetic to Parliament, her French origins and Catholic beliefs meant that she was regarded with great suspicion. Later historians picking up on this, have spent much time arguing over her political role and the degree to which she could influence the decisions of her husband. What has not been so thoroughly investigated, however, are issues surrounding the popular perceptions of the Queen that inspired the plethora of pamphlets, newsbooks and broadsides. Although most of these documents are polemica...
This book is a cultural study of St Paul's Cathedral, its immediate surroundings, and the people who inhabited it prior to the 1666 fire of London.
And perhaps most notably, he evaluates how the ethics of friendship have evolved over the centuries, from traditional emphases on loyalty, to the Kantian idea of moral benevolence, to the more private and sexualized idea of friendship that emerged during the modern era."--BOOK JACKET.
This collection of essays examines the idea of the future in early modern European literature, politics, religion, science, and social life. Investigating how both elite and popular writers represented their access to or control over the future, it proposes new insights into one of the defining characteristics of modernity.