Selling the Tudor Monarchy
WARNING
You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com
Authority and Image in Sixteenth-Century England
Kevin Sharpe
View Inside
Format: PaperPrice: $58.00
The management of image in the service of power is a familiar tool of twenty-first- century politics. Yet as long ago as the sixteenth century, British monarchs deployed what we might now describe as “spin.” In this book a leading historian reveals how Tudor kings and queens sought to enhance their authority by presenting themselves to best advantage. Kevin Sharpe offers the first full analysis of the verbal and visual representations of Tudor power, embracing disciplines as diverse as art history, literary studies, and the history of consumption and material culture.
The author finds that those rulers who maintained the delicate balance between mystification and popularization in the art of royal representation—notably Henry VIII and Elizabeth I—enjoyed the longest reigns and often the widest support. But by the end of the sixteenth century, the perception of royalty shifted, becoming less sacred and more familiar and leaving Stuart successors to the crown to deal with a difficult legacy.
Kevin Sharpe is professor of Renaissance studies and director of the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, Queen Mary, University of London. He is author of The Personal Rule of Charles I and Reading Revolutions, both published by Yale University Press.
“A landmark project, of abiding interest to both scholars and more general readers. . . . a very major piece of scholarship.”—Peter Lake, Princeton University
“. . . ambitious. Selling the Tudor Monarchy, a major synthesis of the scholarship on the period, is the first volume of a near-completed trilogy covering representations of the English monarchy, from Henry VIII’s break with Rome to the Revolution of 1688. The range of material is encyclopaedic … experts … will regard it as an essential reference work …”—John Guy, Literary Review
and . . . so provides plenty to ruminate on." — Richard Woulfe, Tribune
full of brilliant insights and suggestions." — Greg Walker, Art Newspaper
“This is a bold undertaking, but this first volume suggests that it is one very much suited to Kevin Sharpe’s strengths. The prose is fluent and accessible, the ideas striking, the argument assertive and wide-ranging, based on a vast array of different sources . . . this book is immensely valuable. . . . a huge achievement. . . an important, thought-provoking and richly rewarding book which should be required reading for every early modern scholar.”--Lucy Wooding, Reviews in History
“Sharpe captures the multi-layered magnificence of Tudor monarchy and its audiences….Written by a scholar who has worked at the forefront of historical enquiry for almost three decades, the book establishes an agenda for the next generation. . .with a contagious enthusiasm that will engage general and specialist readers alike.”--Janet Dickinson, History Today
“Convincing and important.”
--Philological Quarterly“A big and serious book . . . Sharpe shows with great fluency and skill that the Tudor monarchs understood the effectiveness of image.”
--Stephen Alford, Huntington Library Quarterly“A compelling and wide-ranging account of the importance of image and representation to the Tudor monarchs . . . [this book] will be of value to scholars across the disciplines who are interested in the political culture of early modern England.”—Karl Gunther, Journal of Modern History
Publication Date: December 12, 2017
66 illus
