Thomas S. Freeman

Susan Doran

Elizabeth I is one of England's most admired and celebrated rulers. She is also one of its most iconic: her image is familiar from paintings, film and television. This wide-ranging interdisciplinary collection of essays examines the origins and development of the image and myths that came to surround the Virgin Queen. The essays question the prevailing assumptions about the mythic Elizabeth and challenge the view that she was unambiguously celebrated in the literature and portraiture of the early modern era. They explain how the most familiar myths surrounding the queen developed from the concerns of her contemporaries and yet continue to reverberate today. Published to mark the 400th anniversary of the queen's death, this volume will appeal to all those with an interest in the historiography of Elizabeth's reign and Elizabethan, and Jacobean, poets, dramatists and artists.

The Myth of Elizabeth

Elizabeth I is one of England's most admired and celebrated rulers. She is also one of its most iconic. This wide-ranging interdisciplinary collection of essays examines the origins and development of the image and myths that came to surround the Virgin Queen. The essays question the prevailing assumptions about the mythic Elizabeth and challenge the view that she was unanimously celebrated in the literature and portraiture of the early modern era. They explain how the most familiar myths surrounding the queen developed from the concerns of her contemporaries and continue to reverberate today. Published to mark the 400th anniversary of the queen's death, this volume will appeal to all those with an interest in the historiography of Elizabeth's reign and Elizabethan, and Jacobean, poets and dramatists.

According to both popular myth and traditional histories, Mary Tudor was a failure. Known primarily as Bloody Mary, she has usually been contrasted unfavorably with her younger sibling and heir, Elizabeth I. This negative view of Mary has most recently been perpetuated in David Starkey's TV documentaries and biography of the young Elizabeth, which present the new queen as deliberately forging a path that was quite different from that of her half-sister. The time has come for a rethink. Susan Doran and Tom Freeman have gathered an outstanding team of international historians to look at the traditional presentation of Mary and her reign, and why we should question this view. This incisive collection will appeal to students, scholars and general readers.Features: * Challenges the accepted view of Mary as a tyrant, presenting a more balanced and nuanced portrait * Based on the latest cutting-edge and controversial thinking in Early Modern history * Traces the growth and development of the myth of 'Bloody Mary' This text will be essential reading for graduate courses on Tudor history.

Old and New Perspectives

Mary Tudor

Why should films be historically accurate? Why are some monarchs popular subjects in film and others virtually ignored? This book explores the preoccupations of the filmmakers, the sources they used and each film's reception.

Historical Perspectives

Tudors and Stuarts on Film

Henry VIII remains the most iconic and controversial of all English Kings. For over four-hundred years he has been lauded, reviled and mocked, but rarely ignored. In his many guises - model Renaissance prince, Defender of the Faith, rapacious plunderer of the Church, obese Bluebeard-- he has featured in numerous works of fact and faction, in books, magazines, paintings, theatre, film and television. Yet despite this perennial fascination with Henry the man and monarch, there has been little comprehensive exploration of his historiographic legacy. Therefore scholars will welcome this collection, which provides a systematic survey of Henry's reputation from his own age through to the present. Divided into three sections, the volume begins with an examination of Henry's reputation in the period between his death and the outbreak of the English Civil War, a time that was to create many of the tropes that would dominate his historical legacy. The second section deals with the further evolution of his reputation, from the Restoration to Edwardian era, a time when Catholic commentators and women writers began moving into the mainstream of English print culture. The final section covers the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, which witnessed an explosion of representations of Henry, both in print and on screen. Taken together these studies, by a distinguished group of international scholars, offer a lively and engaging overview of how Henry's reputation has been used, abused and manipulated in both academia and popular culture since the sixteenth century. They provide intriguing insights into how he has been reinvented at different times to reflect the cultural, political and religious demands of the moment; sometimes as hero, sometimes as villain, but always as an unmistakable and iconic figure in the historical landscape.

Henry VIII and History

David L. Smith

The essays in this volume seek to analyze biographical films as representations of historical individuals and the times in which they lived. To do this, contributors examine the context in which certain biographical films were made, including the state of knowledge about their subjects at that moment, and what these films reveal about the values and purposes of those who created them. This is an original approach to biographical (as opposed to historical) films and one that has so far played little part in the growing literature on historical films. The films discussed here date from the 1920s to the 2010s, and deal with males and females in periods ranging from the Middle Ages to the end of the twentieth century. In the process, the book discusses how biographical films reflect changing attitudes towards issues such as race, gender and sexuality, and examines the influence of these films on popular perceptions of the past. The introduction analyses the nature of biographical films as a genre: it compares and contrasts the nature of biography on film with written biographies, and considers their relationship with the discipline of history. As the first collection of essays on this popular but understudied genre, this book will be of interest to historians as well as those in film and cultural studies.

Thomas S. Freeman

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