Monarchy and Incest in Renaissance England : Literature, Culture, Kinship, and Kingship

In __Monarchy and Incest in Renaissance England__, Bruce Thomas Boehrer argues that a preoccupation with incest is built not the dominant social and cultural concerns of early modern England. Proceeding from a study of Henry III's divorce and succession legislation, through the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I, this work examines the interrelation between family politics and literary expression in and around the English royal court. In dissolving his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII claimed that Catherine's brief marriage to Henry's deceased brother, Arthur, had rendered the subsequent union incestuous. Henry's next marriage could be called incestuous as well, for Anne Boleyn's sister Mary had been the king's mistress before her. But early rumor hinted at an even darker incestuous connection between Henry and Anne; she was, some charged, not only the king's lover, but his illegitimate daughter. Monarchy and Incest in Renaissance England argues that a preoccupation with incest is built into the dominant social and cultural concerns of early modern England. Proceeding from a study of Henry VIII's divorce and succession legislation through the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I, this work examines the interrelation between family politics and literary expression in and around the English royal court. Boehrer contends that themes of incest appear irregularly and prominently in the imaginative literature of the period. Some fifty extant plays from 1559 to 1658 deal either explicitly or implicitly with the subject. Incest emerges as a structural motif in texts as diverse as The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost, and figures at least implicitly in nondramatic works by Jonson, Chapman, Shakespeare, and others. Monarchy and Incest in Renaissance England explores the response to, and modification of cultural anxieties regarding family structure. It is a brilliant and original work that will be of interest to scholars and students of English Renaissance literature and history, as well as of cultural studies Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Telling Stories About Incest The Problem Reader's Program 1. Henry VIII and the Political Uses of Incest Theory In the Bedrooms of the Great Basic Theory of Incest Doctrine of the Henrician Divorce (Part I) Doctrine of the Henrician Divorce (Part II) Anthropology as Politics 2. Incest and Tudor Literary Politics Henry's Legacy Elizabeth and the Issue of Title Three Tudor Plays "Ten Times Our Mother": Incest and Feminine Authority in Hamlet The Cult of Chastity 3. James I and the Fabrication of Kinship The Succession Revisited Revenge Tragedy and the Jacobean Social Climber A Queen and No Queen: Female Inheritance in Beaumont and Fletcher Commerce and Incest in Women Beware Women The Conundrum of Kin(g)ship 4. The End of Kingship? Incest and the English Revolution Charles I: The Governor as Family Man John Ford's Tremulous Private Heaven Cavalier Drama and the Royal Dilemma Milton and the Powers That Be 5. Conclusions: The Politics of Incest Theory Westermarck, Morgan, Nature Freud, Feminism, Culture "The Libertie of a Subject": Incest and Child Abuse The Demographics of Incest in Renaissance England The Properties of Kingship Afterword Notes Bibliography Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y

In Monarchy and Incest in Renaissance England, Bruce Thomas Boehrer argues that a preoccupation with incest is built not the dominant social and cultural concerns of early modern England. Proceeding from a study of Henry III's divorce and succession legislation, through the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I, this work examines the interrelation between family politics and literary expression in and around the English royal court.