James VI and I


Book Description

The renowned historian Jenny Wormald was a ground-breaking expert on early modern Scottish history, especially Stewart kingship, noble power and wider society. She was most controversial in her book-length critique of Mary, Queen of Scots. Unfortunately, Jenny never got round to producing a similar monograph on a monarch she was infinitely more fond of, King James VI and I, before her untimely death in 2015. In the absence of such a book, this volume brings together all the major essays by Jenny on James. She wrote on almost every aspect and every major event of James' reign, from the famous Gunpowder Plot, the Plantation of Ulster, the Gowrie Conspiracy, to the witchcraft panics, as well as James' extensive writings. She wrote extensively on James' Scottish rule, but she was also keenly interested in James as the first king of all of Britain, and many of her essays unpick the issues surrounding the Union of the Crowns and James' rule over all three of his kingdoms. This book is an invaluable resource for any scholar on this crucial time in the history of the British Isles.







Machiavelli in the British Isles


Book Description

Machiavelli in the British Isles reassesses the impact of Machiavelli's The Prince in sixteenth-century England and Scotland through the analysis of early English translations produced before 1640, surviving in manuscript form. This study concentrates on two of the four extant sixteenth-century versions: William Fowler's Scottish translation and the Queen's College (Oxford) English translation, which has been hitherto overlooked by scholars. Alessandra Petrina begins with an overview of the circulation and readership of Machiavelli in early modern Britain before focusing on the eight surviving manuscripts. She reconstructs each manuscript's history and the afterlife of the translations before moving to a detailed examination of two of the translations. Petrina's investigation of William Fowler's translation takes into account his biography, in order to understand the Machiavellian influence on early modern political thought. Her study of the Queen's College translation analyses the manuscript's provenance as well as technical details including writing and paper quality. Importantly, this book includes annotated editions of both translations, which compare the texts with the original Italian versions as well as French and Latin versions. With this volume Petrina has compiled an important reference source, offering easy access to little-known translations and shedding light on a community of readers and scholars who were fascinated by Machiavelli, despite political or religious opinion.




Sovereignty: Seventeenth-Century England and the Making of the Modern Political Imaginary


Book Description

This book argues that sovereignty is the first-order question of political order, and that seventeenth-century England provides an important case study in the roots of its modern iterations. It offers fresh readings of Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, and Andrew Marvell, as well as lesser-known figures and literary texts. In addition to political philosophy and literary studies, it also takes account of the period's legal history, exploring the exercise of the crown's feudal rights in the Court of Wards and Liveries, debates over habeas rights, and contests of various courts over jurisdiction. Theorizing sovereignty in a way that points forward to later modernity, the book also offers a sustained critique of the writings of Carl Schmitt, the twentieth century's most influential, if also most controversial, thinker on this topic.










Sonnet Sequences and Social Distinction in Renaissance England


Book Description

Why were sonnet sequences popular in Renaissance England? In this study, Christopher Warley suggests that sonneteers created a vocabulary to describe, and to invent, new forms of social distinction before an explicit language of social class existed. The tensions inherent in the genre - between lyric and narrative, between sonnet and sequence - offered writers a means of reconceptualizing the relation between individuals and society, a way to try to come to grips with the broad social transformations taking place at the end of the sixteenth century. By stressing the struggle over social classification, the book revises studies that have tied the influence of sonnet sequences to either courtly love or to Renaissance individualism. Drawing on Marxist aesthetic theory, it offers detailed examinations of sequences by Lok, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton. It will be valuable to readers interested in Renaissance and genre studies, and post-Marxist theories of class.







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