Overview
This is an examination of the shifts in textual accounts of Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart, beginning during their reigns, and ending in the late Start-era. Scholarship has largely focused on English mythologizing of Elizabeth in post-mortem reinterpretations, often beginning analysis with Elizabeth's Stuart successor, James VI from Scotland, who was also Mary Stuart's only son. However, this site will illustrate how important it is to begin examining both queens' representations with biographies during their lifetimes, and continue throughout the political and cultural upheaval in England during the seventeenth-century, as the Stuart dynasty struggled to adapt. read more...
The Biographers
The sample of writers examined for this project are commonly mentioned in studies of humanism, antiquarianism, historical writing, or English court patronage. While these elements are important for understanding facets of these men, this project argues that their social connections need to be considered as well, particularly when analyzing the evolution of writings styles within a shifting political and dynastic environment, while adapting to each monarch's particular sensibilities. The opening section, "Those hidden Springs of Affairs": A Familiar Circle of Friends, Politics, and Publishing, provides an examination of these social connections, highlighting their importance for tracing the shifts in textual representation of Elizabeth and Mary during the evolution of historical writing in early modern England. For a more detailed biography on each writer, see "Learned men in all Ages": the Biographies of the Biographers
.Representations of the Queens: textual, historiographical, and pictoral
Building from the explication of influences upon writing and the historical context, this section provides textual analysis of a selection of Tudor and Stuart biographical writings on the two queens in Representational Themes. There are some examples of these queens' reepresentation in later historical writing in Historiographical Analysis. For visual evidence of these representations, see the Image Gallery where paintings or textual illustrations from the contemporary and later periods, and also the primary texts.
Sources
For this project, both a primary source archive and bibliography of secondary sources are provided. There are excerpts from basic transcriptions of fourteen primary sources. A bibliography of books, articles, and additional reading is also provided.