Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xix

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2. Introduction: Studies of Queens in Honor of Carole Levin

   • Anna R. Bertolet

   Pages 1-15

3. Prelude: Studying Queens

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 17-17

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   2. Queenship and Power: The Heart and Stomach of a Book Series

      • Charles Beem

      Pages 19-28

4. Queens and Matters of Gender

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 29-29

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   2. Did Elizabeth’s Gender Really Matter?

      • Susan Doran

      Pages 31-52

   3. A Great Reckoning in a Little Room: Elizabeth, Essex, and Royal Interruptions

      • Catherine Loomis

      Pages 53-66

   4. “We Are Such Stuff”: Absolute Feminine Power vs. Cinematic Myth-Making in Julie Taymor’s Tempest (2010)

      • Kirilka Stavreva

      Pages 67-80

5. Queens and Marriage

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 81-81

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   2. Elizabeth I and the Marriage Crisis, John Lyly’s Campaspe, and the Politics of Court Drama

      • Jane Donawerth

      Pages 83-102

   3. Tudor Consorts: The Politics of Matchmaking, 1483–1543

      • Retha M. Warnicke

      Pages 103-121

   4. The Queen’s Deathbed Wish in Early Modern Fairy Tales: Securing the Dynasty

      • Jo Eldridge Carney

      Pages 123-137

6. Queens and Religion

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 139-139

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   2. Spenser’s Dragon Fight and the English Queen: The Struggle Over the Elizabethan Settlement

      • Donald Stump

      Pages 141-156

   3. Anne Boleyn’s Legacy to Elizabeth I: Neoclassicism and the Iconography of Protestant Queenship

      • Helen Hackett

      Pages 157-180

   4. “A Network of Honor and Obligation”: Elizabeth as Godmother

      • Elaine Kruse

      Pages 181-198

7. Queens, National Identity, and Diplomacy

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 199-199

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   2. Lesbianism in Early Modern Vernacular Romance: The Question of Historicity

      • John Watkins

      Pages 201-221

   3. Doppelgänger Queens: Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart

      • Anna R. Bertolet

      Pages 223-245

   4. Elizabeth I and the Politics of Invoking Russia in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost

      • Linda Shenk

      Pages 247-265

The essays in this book traverse two centuries of queens and their afterlives—historical, mythological, and literary. They speak of the significant and subtle ways that queens leave their mark on the culture they inhabit, focusing on gender, marriage, national identity, diplomacy, and representations of queens in literature. Elizabeth I looms large in this volume, but the interrogation of queenship extends from Elizabeth's historical counterparts, such as Anne Boleyn and Catherine de Medici, to her fictional echoes in the pages of John Lyly, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Mary Wroth, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish. Celebrating and building on the renowned scholarship of Carole Levin, Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies exemplifies a range of innovative approaches to examining women and power in the early modern period.

• Carole Levin
• Early Modern period
• Female rulers
• Queenship and Power
• Gender studies
• Queenship
• Women in history
• Elizabethan history
• representations of queens in literature
• John Lyly's Campaspe
• Tudor consorts
• queens in early modern fairytales
• English Protestant queenship
• iconography of queenship
• lesbianism in early modern literature
• French diplomacy in Elizabethan England
• Blazing World Margaret Cavendish
• queenship and material culture

“This impressive collection makes a significant contribution to our understanding of queenship.  The engaging essays range across centuries and disciplinary boundaries, exploring subjects as diverse as early modern fairy tales, Anne Boleyn’s coronation pageants, Elizabeth I as a godmother, Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World, and more.  In their richness and variety, they are a fitting tribute to groundbreaking scholar Carole Levin.” (Mary Villeponteaux, Professor of Literature, Georgia Southern University, USA)

• Auburn University, Auburn, USA

  Anna Riehl Bertolet

Anna Riehl Bertolet is Associate Professor of English at Auburn University, USA. She is the author of The Face of Queenship: Early Modern Representations of Elizabeth I (2010); and co-editor of Tudor Court Culture (2010), A Biographical Encyclopedia of Early Modern Englishwomen 1500-1650: Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts (2016), and Creating the Premodern in the Postmodern Classroom: Creativity in Early English Literature and History Courses (forthcoming from ACMRS, 2018).

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