The Subject of Elizabeth

Authority, Gender, and Representation

Cloth $70.00 ISBN: 9780226534732 Published June 2006

Paper $30.00 ISBN: 9780226534756 Published June 2006

As a woman wielding public authority, Elizabeth I embodied a paradox at the very center of sixteenth-century patriarchal English society. Louis Montrose’s long-awaited book, The Subject of Elizabeth, illuminates the ways in which the Queen and her subjects variously exploited or obfuscated this contradiction.

Montrose offers a masterful account of the texts, pictures, and performances in which the Queen was represented to her people, to her court, to foreign powers, and to Elizabeth herself. Retrieving this “Elizabethan imaginary” in all its richness and fascination, Montrose presents a sweeping new account of Elizabethan political culture. Along the way, he explores the representation of Elizabeth within the traditions of Tudor dynastic portraiture; explains the symbolic manipulation of Elizabeth’s body by both supporters and enemies of her regime; and considers how Elizabeth’s advancing age provided new occasions for misogynistic subversions of her royal charisma.

This book, the remarkable product of two decades of study by one of our most respected Renaissance scholars, will be welcomed by all historians, literary scholars, and art historians of the period.

Renaissance Society of America: Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Book Prize
Honorable Mention

View Recent Awards page for more award winning books.

“Patient, generative, and often dazzling in its sustained analysis, The Subject of Elizabeth makes us strikingly aware that the Queen was a vibrant and contradictory phenomenon as well as a person. Part body, part god, part idea—a female celebrity in a male-dominated world—Elizabeth was the product of wildly competing representations, images, figures, and fantasies, and as such, she serves as a valuable nodal point through which Montrose is able to track the rhythms of a vexed Renaissance political culture. The book’s deeply historical focus provides not only a wonderful complement to Montrose’s earlier scholarship on canonical literary representations, but also a nuanced account of how the imagery surrounding Elizabeth changed significantly over the course of her reign. It is truly a must-read book for scholars interested in gender and early modern culture.”—Wendy Wall, author of Staging Domesticity: Household Work and English Identity in Early Modern Drama

“The Subject of Elizabeth takes us beyond the glittering façade of the cult of Gloriana, illuminating the fierce antagonisms, sordid gossip, and complex intrigues behind the intricate artifacts of Elizabethan political culture. Louis Montrose’s incisive and fascinating account of these clashing royal images recalls the ‘mirrours more then one’ in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and, as he notes in his probing discussion of contemporary aesthetics, the shadows darkening these pictures of the Queen give them greater depth and verisimilitude.”—Richard McCoy, author of Alterations of State: Sacred Kingship in the English Reformation

“Montrose has an understanding of the complex political, literary, and iconographic unfolding of the cult of Elizabeth that is unmatched among early modern scholars for its theoretical sophistication and shrewdness of observation. The Subject of Elizabeth is multilayered, densely and eloquently argued, and richly attentive to the fascinating linkages between the literary and the visual record. Montrose’s deep knowledge of Elizabethan court culture is powerfully evident everywhere in these pages.”—Gail Kern Paster, author of Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage

"Twenty-five years ago Louis Montrose's pioneering essay 'Eliza Queen of Shepherdes and the Pastoral of Power' cracked one of the crucial codes of Elizabethan celebratory rhetoric. His new book, addressing the complex and contradictory nature of Elizabeth as performer and spectacle, finally fulfills a very old promise. This is an important and fascinating book, and it is wonderful to have it at last."—Stephen Orgel, author of The Authentic Shakespeare

"A fascinating acount of [Elizabeth's] representation as a woman ruler in a patriarchal society and of her councilor's attempts to take political advantage of her gender while simultaneously working to contain its perceived frailties. . . . This important interdisciplinary work offers valuable insights into her culture and will be of interest to all Elizabethan scholars."

"McKee has done an admirable job bringing this extraordinary woman to life. The selections are well chosen, and include samples from an entire lifetime of work. . . . I heartily recommend this book and applaud McKee's decision to issue these important texts."

"In this finely woven tapestry of a book, Louis Montrose draws on and reorients his substantial writings on the world of Elizabethan imagery as he explores the competing and diverse representations of the queen. . . . The Subject of Elizabeth offers easy and rewarding access into the challenging world of the Elizabethan court."

"In his own signature prose style yoking intensity with lucidity, augmented by illuminating illustrations, Montrose's book will deservedly reach a wide audience."

"The book will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers from advanced scholars and specialists . . . to more general readers of Elizabethan history, literature, and art. . . . A well-written and fascinating work."

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
A Note on Quotations from Early Modern Texts
Introduction: Foundations and Trajectories
Part 1 - Dynasty and Difference
1. Contested Legitimacies
2. Filial Emulation
3. The Tudor Sisterhood
4. The Protestant Succession
Part 2 - Idolatries
5. Imagery, Policy, and Belief
6. Iconomachy
7. Instrumental Adoration
8. A Cult of Elizabeth?
Part 3 - Queen and Country
9. The Geopolitical Imaginary
10. Policy in Pictures
11. Purity and Danger
Part 4 - Resistances
12. Vox Populi
13. Defacing the Queen
14. Secrets of the Heart
Part 5 - Time's Subject
15. A Queen of Shadows
16. Mysteries of State
17. Through the Looking Glass
Epilogue: The Jacobean Phoenix
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index

For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu

Art: British Art

Gender and Sexuality

History: British History

Literature and Literary Criticism: British and Irish Literature

Women's Studies

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