Elizabeth I:The Competition for Representation
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"Susan Frye's Elizabeth I is an exciting and original book, a richly detailed discussion of the way the queen constructed her image and deployed her authority. The argument is indebted to feminist and new historicist modes of analysis, but it is primarily informed by a concern with biography and the intricacies of history. It offers the reader a continual sense of discovery."--Stephen Orgel, Stanford University
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Elizabeth I is perhaps the most visible woman in early modern Europe, yet little attention has been paid to what she said about the difficulties of constructing her power in a patriarchal society. Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation examines her struggle for authority through the representation of her female body. Frye's method is to provide historical accounts of three representational crises spaced fifteen years apart: the London coronation entry of 1559, the Kenilworth entertainments of 1575, and the publication of The Faerie Queene in 1590. In ways which varied with social class and historical circumstance, the London merchants, the members of the Protestant faction, courtly artists and artful courtiers all sought to stabilize their own gendered identities by constructing the queen within the 'natural'definitions of feminine as passive and weak. Elizabeth fought back, acting as a discursive agent by crossing and then disrupting these definitions. She and those closely identified with her interests evolved a number of strategies through which to express her control of the government as the ownership of her body, including her elaborate iconography and a mythic biography upon which most accounts of Elizabeth's life have been based. The more authoritative her image became, the more violently it was contested in a process which this book examines and consciously perpetuates.
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First Sentence
When Elizabeth I participated in her coronation entry, she entered a London as yet unmarked by her reign. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
When Elizabeth I participated in her coronation entry, she entered a London as yet unmarked by her reign. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Format:Paperback
The debate over who was responsible for Elizabeth's image(s) as Gloriana, the Virgin Queen, continues. Frye takes one of the more subtle views and examines the way the very contestation of images created the representations we still hold today.
Taking an overtly feminist stance, Frye especially explores the role of gender and Elizabeth's own agency, and the way she both worked within contemporary gender roles while simultaneously problematising them.
This is especially good on the 1590s, the difficult last decade of Elizabeth's reign, when she turned 60 and yet still appeared in her portraits as the immortal beauty. Frye's readings take in literary representations (e.g. The Faerie Queene) as well as painted images.
This is imaginative as well as rigorous, suggestive and provocative, and well-worth reading for anyone working in this field.
Taking an overtly feminist stance, Frye especially explores the role of gender and Elizabeth's own agency, and the way she both worked within contemporary gender roles while simultaneously problematising them.
This is especially good on the 1590s, the difficult last decade of Elizabeth's reign, when she turned 60 and yet still appeared in her portraits as the immortal beauty. Frye's readings take in literary representations (e.g. The Faerie Queene) as well as painted images.
This is imaginative as well as rigorous, suggestive and provocative, and well-worth reading for anyone working in this field.
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1 review
An exciting look at Elizabeth's courtiers as critics.
14 Nov 2000
Format:Paperback
Frye's study of Elizabeth's struggle to control her iconography and representation is very powerful. She discusses three major events in the course of Elizabeth's reign, and how merchants, courtiers and poets represented Elizabeth through them: praising her glory and virtue, yet simultaneously taking the critical liberties of a patriarchal society over a woman.
Frye's third chapter on "Engendered Violence" is especially revealing, whether or not we can fully accept the extremity of such criticism in the character of Britomart in Spenser's Faerie Queene.
This book is wonderful, a necessary read for anyone interested in the force of gender in the Renaissance.
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