Constructing Cromwell: Ceremony, Portrait, and Print 1645-1661

by Laura Lunger Knoppers

Overview

Constructing Cromwell traces the complex and shifting popular print images of Oliver Cromwell from his first appearance as a public figure in the 1640s through the period of his power to his death and eventual disinterment after the restoration of the monarchy. Drawing on extensive archival research, including manuscript sources, startling print ephemera, and visual artifacts, Laura Knoppers shows how Cromwellian print transformed the courtly forms of Caroline ceremony, portraiture and panegyric. Her study also finds a new cultural context for authors such as Milton, Marvell, Dryden and Waller.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521662611
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/22/2000
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	7.09(w) x 10.08(h) x 0.83(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. 'A Coffin for King Charles, A Crowne for Cromwell': royalist satire and the regicide; 2. Portraiture, print, and the republican heroic; 3. 'Riding in triumph': ceremony and print in the early Protectorate; 4. Contesting Cromwell in the late Protectorate; 5. 'I saw him dead': Cromwell's death and funeral; 6. Ceremony, print, and punishment in the early restoration; Afterword; Notes; Works cited; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Wonderful...contributes greatly to our understanding of a highly complex and constantly controversial historical figure." Christianity and Literature

"The book is a valuable contribution to the literature and its thirty-eight illustrations much enhance it's appeal." Albion

"Knoppers has provided a model for future cultural analyses in her insistence on the importance of cultural contexts, her emphasis on the way popular culture, as well as high culture, shapes public perception, and her demonstration of the real power of mass media in selecting and empowering images." Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler, Journal of English and Germanic Philology

From the Publisher