Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth 1558-1585

by A. N. McLaren

Overview

Anne McLaren explores the consequences for English political culture when, with the accession of Elizabeth I, imperial "kingship" came to be invested in a female ruler. She looks at how Elizabeth managed to be queen, in the face of considerable male opposition, and emphasizes the continuities between Elizabeth's reign and the outbreak of the English civil wars in the seventeenth century. Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I thus offers a wholesale reinterpretation of the political dynamics of the period.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521651448
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/09/1999
Series:	Ideas in Context , #56
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	0.83(w) x 9.02(h) x 5.98(d)
Lexile:	1780L (what's this?)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. 'To be Deborah': The political implications of providentialism under a female ruler; 2. Announcing the godly common weal: Knox, Aylmer and the parameters of counsel; 3. Feats of incorporation: the ideological bases of the mixed monarchy; 4. Contesting the social order: 'resistance theory' and the mixed monarchy; 5. Godly men and nobles: the bicephalic body politic; 6. Godly men and parliamentarians: the politics of counsel in the 1570s; 7. Rewriting the common weal: Sir Thomas Smith and the De Republica Angelorum; Afterword; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"A. N. McLaren's study of political culture in the first part of the reign of Elizabeth is a thoughtful and thoroughly researched study that deals with the connections between ideology and politics, on how concepts of hierarchy, patriarchy, and commonwealth changed in the reign of Elizabeth I. The research for the study and the analysis are both first rate. Readers should persevere, however, as Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I asks scholars to think about the connections between ideology and politics in new and important ways." Renaissance Quarterly

From the Publisher