Governing Romance in Seventeenth-Century England
Open Access
- Author:
- Jacobs, Nicole Ann
- Graduate Program:
- English
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- August 31, 2009
- Committee Members:
- Linda Woodbridge, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Linda Woodbridge, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Laura Lunger Knoppers, Committee Member
Garrett Sullivan Jr., Committee Member
Marcy Lynne North, Committee Member
Alexander C Y Huang, Committee Member - Keywords:
- constitutional theory
George Mackenzie
Hester Pulter
Theophania
Charles I
John Milton
Edmund Spenser
Philip Sidney
Mary Wroth
Shakespeare
political theory
romance
absolutism
tyranny - Abstract:
- Governing Romance in Seventeenth-Century England provides a genealogy of a seventeenth-century English literary form, tracing the relationship between the evolution of romance and the contingencies of contemporary politics. Because of its reputation for developing licentious plot lines designed to overtake readers’ leisure time, romance offers a powerful yet seemingly unassuming literary tool for writers to register the political thought surrounding James I’s absolutism, Charles I’s conflict with Parliament, the Civil War, the Interregnum, the Protectorate regime of Oliver Cromwell, and the Restoration of Charles II. The project examines the politics of romance in the works of William Shakespeare, Mary Wroth, Royalists and Parliamentarians of the 1640s, the anonymous author of Theophania, and Hester Pulter. The study argues that there are two distinct types of political romances in the seventeenth century—the diagnostic and the prescriptive. Diagnostic romances reveal the social tensions that arise during James I’s absolutist reign whereas prescriptive romances not only register critiques of the contemporary government, but also propose strategies for coping with the injustices visited upon subjects under the authority of these regimes. The study, then, advances a diachronic model for romance that examines the representation of governance and the conventions that govern the form.