Tag Archives: Elizabeth I

December 3, 2019

My December 2019 Book List

By daseger

I generally post a book list around this time of year: my favorite books of the past year, books I want for Christmas, books I’m reading or assigning for my spring courses, books I want to read over the holiday break. This list is all of that except for the first category: I haven’t read much this past year because I’ve been working so hard—writing myself, teaching, and reading to teach—and so I really can’t play favorites. This was not a leisurely year and there is very little fiction on this list, and even very little history unrelated to my teaching: very little American history in particular. To a certain extent, this blog has been an exercise in discovering the American history which I avoided from high school: I’ve learned a lot but now I’m kind of done—it seems a bit repetitive to me. Other worlds call, and new books in my own fields are piling up! I’ll never be done with the histories of architecture (structure and landscape) and material culture though—and folklore, though nothing of that genre caught my eye this year. So proceeding in chronological order, here are the books which did.

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These books are all for my courses and an endless writing project which I hope to bring to fruition in the coming year. Simon de Montfort is one of those guys like Sir Philip Sidney: a glamorous representative of his age, in this case the thirteenth century, who has a very dramatic story which students love and which can also represent the best (anti-absolutism) and worst (antisemitism) of the time. I’ve read everything about de Montfort, and this book, by University of Lancaster Lecturer Sophie Thérèse Ambler, is very good, full of details and analysis which will enhance my teaching. I will be reading Renaissance Futurities and Gardens for Gloriana for pleasure and for context for own work over the break, and I am considering Walter Ralegh and Elizabethan Globalism for sections and courses on European expansion in the early modern era, although the latter is also an absolutely gorgeous book that could double as a more casual coffee-table text. Climate history is absolutely essential right now, as as the periods I teach encompass both the “Medieval Warm Period” and the “Little Ice Age” I’m always on the hunt for fresh environmental perspectives: Nature’s Mutiny is a potential adoption for several of my courses but I have to read it over the break to gauge its accessibility.

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These are all books I WANT or want to read: I think Inventing Boston would inform my understanding of Salem craftsmanship in the same key era, Mark Girouard’s classic Life in the English Country House has been reissued in a stunning edition by the Folio Society this year with photographs from Country Life and a binding illustration by architectural artist John Pumfrey, and I collect Penguin clothbound editions by Coralie Bickford-Smith. I’m not sure I buy into Orlando Figes’ themes of European unity and modernity in the nineteenth century, but that is an era with which I need to engage, again. I’ve always been fascinated with Frank Lloyd Wright’s professional and personal life, and who doesn’t want to read about English Country House parties? Oh, and in addition to Sandition, I did want to read one other novel this year if only for the local reference in its title, but no, I cannot read Lucy Ellman’s 1000-page Ducks, Newburyport at this particular time: I just don’t have the ability (or the time) to dwell on a strung-out sentence of rambling thoughts, as experimental and interesting as it/ they may be. Maybe next year, or the year after.

16 Comments | tags: Architecture, books, Climate, Elizabeth I, holidays, illustration, Jane Austen, Lists, Renaissance, Shopping | posted in books, History

June 24, 2016

A Breech-less Brute

By daseger

The students in my Elizabethan class had quite a lot to say about Marcus Gheerhaerts’ 1594 portrait of Captain Thomas Lee yesterday: it is indeed a provocative portrait and he was indeed a provocative man. A poor relation of Sir Henry Lee, the Queen’s Champion and Master of the Armouries, Thomas’s career is characterized by his long “service” in Ireland, from the mid 1570s until the late 1590s, after which he was implicated in the Essex Rebellion of 1601 and executed for treason. In his pursuit of the conquest of Ireland and his own personal gain, Captain Lee murdered, blinded, stole, and conspired. When he was not “serving”, he engaged in highway robbery and was imprisoned for debt. He was not a happy outlaw, however, and the Gheerhaerts portrait, along with his two essays, A brief declaration of the government of Ireland (1594) and The discovery and recovery of Ireland with the author’s apology (1599), are attempts to repair his reputation. Too little too late–though his arrest and execution at Tyburn in February of 1601 were consequences of his involvement in the Essex plot rather than any of his actions in Ireland, which were supposedly on behalf of the Queen.

Portrait of Captain Thomas Lee by Marcus Gheeraerts II, 1594, Tate Britain.

Well of course this personal history does not explain why Captain Lee is not wearing pants (or breeches, or hose). Clearly that is the defining feature of this portrait, commonly known as “the man with the bare legs”. There’s something vaguely classical about the painting, with its pastoral background and Latin inscription on the right: Facere et pati Fortia, “To act and suffer bravely”, a quotation from Livy’s history of the Roman commander Caius Mucius Scaevola, who defeated Etruscan rebels by penetrating their camp and living among them, so he could know the enemy. He was recognized for his bravery and rewarded handsomely by the Roman government for his efforts and thus represented a useful example for Lee, who perhaps saw himself as performing a similar service for the Queen among the “wild” Irish. Despite its fanciful fabric, Lee’s outfit is actually a bit more pragmatic: he is fully-armed and wears some semblance of the “uniform” of an Irish foot-soldier, or “wood-kerne”, bare-legged to better accommodate the boggy terrain of the Emerald Isle. So Lee is presenting himself as Irish: he has “gone native” in the (sacrificial) service of the Queen. The true measure of his claimed “sacrifice” can only be grasped through a realization of just how “wilde”, barbaric, and brutal the English perceived and presented the Irish to be: John Derrick’s Image of Irelande (1581) is a good source for this, as is a book by another man who was constantly currying favor with the Queen, Edmund Spenser’s thoroughly racist View of the Present State of Ireland (c. 1596).

Lee’s discoverye and recoverye of Ireland with the authors apologie, ca. 1600. Folger Shakespeare Library: John Derrick, The Image of Irelande, with a Discoverie of Woodkarne, 1581, Edinburgh University Library.

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5 Comments | tags: Britain, Elizabeth I, Illustrations, Ireland, Portraits, Renaissance, Tate Gallery, Teaching | posted in Art, History

January 13, 2015

A Coronation Copy

By daseger

On this day in 1559 (or perhaps the day before?) Queen Elizabeth I left her court for the Tower of London, commencing the three days of festivities which would culminate in her coronation. It strikes me as a good day, therefore, to (re-)examine the most famous symbol of that event, and one of her most iconic images, the so-called Coronation Portrait. I suspect that this painting has even more resonance in our own time because of the film and poster for the 1998 Elizabeth film, in which Cate Blanchett evokes a more approachable, yet also more vulnerable, version of the Virgin Queen, but it’s also important to note that the painting is not quite of her time. When I’m teaching Elizabethan or Tudor history, I always include one class in which we look at all of Elizabeth’s portraits in chronological order, so that we might grasp both the evolution of her image–and the craftsmanship behind it. My students are always surprised when we come to the Coronation Portrait–near the end of the class rather than the beginning. My observation of strict chronological order mandates this, as the Coronation Portrait is actually a copy, produced in the last years of Elizabeth’s reign–and perhaps even upon the occasion of her funeral, after the original painting was lost.

The Coronation Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, Unknown English Artist, c. 1600, © National Portrait Gallery, London; 1998 Elizabeth poster.

Most experts seem to agree that whoever painted the Coronation Portrait had seen a contemporary depiction, as there is another c. 1600 image–a miniature by Nicholas Hilliard–that also features the distinguishing characteristics: the long hair, denoting Elizabeth’s unmarried state and virginity, the cloth-of-gold dress tying her to her Tudor predecessors, the royal ermine, crown, scepter and orb. There are literary descriptions of the coronation festivities as well–reprinted at about the same time that these images were reproduced. There’s obviously an effort at commemoration and memorialization at this time of transition, and perhaps even to project a more youthful (human?) image of Elizabeth—she had become essentially ageless by the end of her reign.

Nicholas Hilliard Coronation Miniature, c. 1600, Private Collection; The Royall Passage of her Maiesty from the Tower of London, to her Palace of White-hall, with al the Speaches and Deuices, both of the Pageants and otherwise, together with her Maiesties seuerall Answers, and most pleasing Speaches to them all, London, 1604, British Library.

If so, the Coronation portrait publicists failed, as another image produced (and reproduced and reproduced….) around the time of her death proved to be far more influential: the engraving by Crispin van de Passe the Elder (after an earlier drawing by Isaac Oliver) projecting a more mature and much more worldly queen, an Imperial Elizabeth. This is the Elizabeth of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the heyday of the British Empire. Even when an intensifying focus on the personal life of the Virgin Queen commenced in the later nineteenth century (culminating in the 1998 Elizabeth film) commenced, she still looks rather Passe-ive!

Memorial print of Crispin van de Passe etching of Elizabeth after Isaac Oliver drawing, 1603, Victoria & Albert Museum; Charles Turner print after van de Passe after Oliver, 1816, British Museum, and the early 20th century historical illustrator Fortunino Matania’s coronation portrait of Elizabeth, c. 1920.

3 Comments | tags: Art, Elizabeth I, illustration, Memory, Teaching, Tudors | posted in Culture, History

July 11, 2014

Taking on the “Hot” Tudors

By daseger

I am deep into the preparations for my summer graduate institute next week: “The Tudors: History, Media and Mythology”. As I’ve got the history and historiography down, my preparations encompass watching lots of videos! This will be the first course that I’ve taught which extensively uses film and focuses on representations as much as historical realities, but I decided to take it on for several reasons. After this last decade or so of Tudor mania it has become increasingly clear to me that many, if not most, of my students’ historical perspectives were shaped first and foremost by popular culture, so I have to address these interpretations and depictions more directly rather than just leaving them on the side. And there are so many! As Cynthia Herrup notes in her 2009 article in Perspectives on History, the American Historical Association’s magazine, “Students have always come to class with firm ideas drawn from fiction, but now they have multiple visualizations that convince them, on the one hand, that they “know” the history, and on the other hand, that the historically accurate Elizabeth (or Mary, or whoever) is infinitely malleable.” Several of my colleagues have been teaching World War (s) history and film courses for a while, and why not me (and the trendy Tudors?) And lastly, our summer institutes are intense, one-week courses that meet every day, all day long, which is a good format for showing films and clips and having discussions.

So these are the themes that I am pursuing now (subject to change until right up until Monday morning): the absence of Henry VII, the first Tudor: why isn’t he hot? I certainly think he is. The interplay of Tudor projection (through histories, portraits, plays) and modern representations. I like to see the past and present connect (sort of) through projection onto representation. The development of a veritable cults devoted to Mary, Queen of Scots (one of Edison’s earliest films pictures her execution!) and more recently, Anne Boleyn. All sorts of Elizabeth sub-topics: I could have devoted the course entirely to her. And I would also like to demonstrate and discuss the transition from “public television history” to “premium cable history” and back again: after all, The Tudors was produced for Showtime but also broadcast on the BBC (despite David Starkey’s fierce objections).

Tudor Themes & Representations, in images:

The newly-crowned Henry VII! In stills from the 1972 BBC mini-series The Shadow of the Tower and the last episode of the 2013 BBC/Starz mini-series The White Queen (with his mother Margaret Beaufort, who has somehow made her way to the Battle of Bosworth).

Projection: Petworth House copy of Hans Holbein’s incredibly-influential portrait of Henry VIII (© National Trust images/Derrick E. Witty), creating very big SHOULDERS for Robert Shaw (in A Man for all Seasons, 1966) and Eric Bana (The Other Boleyn Girl, 2008) to fill!

The Beheaded Ladies: Anne Boleyn (as played by Natalie Dormer in The Tudors, 2009), Jane Grey (as depicted by Paul Delaroche, 1834, National Gallery, London) and Mary, Queen of Scots (whose execution was captured by a Dutch artist in 1586, National Gallery of Scotland). Why are we so continually fascinated by these romantic “martyrs”?

Eternal Elizabeth: Queen Elizabeth is (relatively) ageless during her own lifetime, but age is definitely an issue in her afterlife! Portrait of the Queen c. 1590 (Jesus College, Oxford University) and Bette Davis in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, 1939.

11 Comments | tags: Art, Elizabeth I, Film, Popular Culture, Teaching, Tudors | posted in Culture, History

September 14, 2013

Eleven Lost Days

By daseger

When people in Salem, and any other British territory around the world, went to bed last night in 1752 it was September 2, but when they woke up this morning it was September 14: they “lost” eleven days as Great Britain and its colonies made the big switch from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar, at long last. The latter was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 in the midst of the religious conflict that followed in the wake of the Reformation; Queen Elizabeth had been excommunicated and declared a heretic by his predecessor: there was no way her Godly country would accept such a papal imposition. While other Protestant countries accepted the new calendar within decades, Britain held out for nearly two centuries.

Engraving of Pop Gregory XIII after Bartolomeo Passarotti, 1572, and print by Pieter van der Heyden of Queen Elizabeth as Diana, judging Pope Gregory as Calisto, c. 1584, British Museum, London.

Religious fervor had subsided considerably by the eighteenth century, if not before. The conduct of both international and Great British commerce made the “Old Style” calendar inconvenient, and so Parliament passed the Calendar Act of 1750, commencing two years of transition to the “New Style” calendar: the year 1751 commenced on 25 March, the Julian New Year, and ran until 31 December, while 1752 began on January I, but sliced off the eleven September days to align the British calendar with that of the Continent. Two short years, and then the British Empire was part of the uniform calendar world. Despite the placement of a “given us our eleven days” placard in Hogarth’s Election Entertainment (1755) there does not seem to have been much resistance in Britain, and even less over here as gazetteers carefully explained the big change. Nathaniel Ames, author of An Astronomical Diary; or Almanack for the Year of our Lord Christ, 1752 devoted his last few pages to explaining that the “striking off the Eleven Days between the 2d and 14th of September, A.D. 1752 was effected “to produce an Uniformity in the Computation of Time throughout the christian Part of the World…”, and the Boston Gazette, the Virginia Almanack, and Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack included explanations and references to the Act of Parliament that had, quite literally, cut their time short.

Virginia Almanack page for September 1752 and 1752 cover of Poor Richard’s Almanack, Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia; The modern calendar: Kate Greenaway’s almanac page for 1888–and 2013, New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

7 Comments | tags: Art, British Empire, Elizabeth I, England, ephemera, Seasons | posted in Culture, History, Salem

August 26, 2013

The Eyes have It

By daseger

Thumbing through the New York Times Style Magazine yesterday, two features caught my eye: one on the beautiful botanical compositions of the French artist Carmen Almon, and another on eye motifs in current clothing and accessories collections. Everything comes around again in fashion, and there is certainly nothing new about the decorative use of the anatomical eye. I was immediately reminded of one of the most spectacular portraits of Elizabeth I, the “rainbow” portrait by Isaac Oliver, in which all-seeing and all-hearing eyes and ears adorn the seemingly-eternal Queen’s gilded gown.

Isaac Oliver, The “Rainbow Portrait” of Queen Elizabeth I, c. 1600, Hatfield House.

I was also reminded of the Georgian and Regency custom of wearing somewhat secretive “lover’s eyes”, miniature paintings of one of your beloved’s eyes, on a chain or as a brooch or ring, supposedly initiated in England by the Prince of Wales (later King George IV) as an expression of his devotion to his unmarriageable mistress, Maria Fitzherbert. Eye miniatures seem to have had an earlier, French, political purpose, and then of course the “all-seeing” eye of providence became an important Masonic symbol that somehow found its way onto our own dollar bill, but the hundreds of decorative objects that have survived seem to be predominately love tokens. Two early nineteenth-century brooches from the Victoria & Albert museum are below, and you can see many more examples here and here.

Two early nineteenth-century unsigned watercolor eye miniatures, Victorian & Albert Museum, London (Note the diamond tear in the lower one!)

The Times “This and That” item, Eyes Everywhere, features eye-embellished flats and a gorgeous organza dress from Christian Dior, as well as the amazing “blue-eyed” ring by Colette and a Kenzo sweatshirt, both below. To complete the ensemble, I scouted out an optical skirt and another blue-eyed accessory–this time a clutch. It would take a daring woman indeed to wear all these items together, transforming herself into a veritable eyeful.