Remapping Early Modern England The Culture of Seventeenth-Century Politics

It is now over twenty years since revisionist history began to transform our understanding of early modern England. The debates between revisionists and their critics goes on. But it has become a sterile debate in which both sides are confined by an attenuated conception of politics. Meanwhile scholars in other disciplines have opened new approaches to the political culture of the English Renaissance state, emphasising the importance of representations of authority and reading plays, poems and portraits as texts of power. Kevin Sharpe has been at the forefront of the dialogue between historians and critics, and a leading exponent of interdisciplinary approaches. In the essays collected here, and in an important new remapping of the field, he revisits earlier debates and urges a 'cultural turn' that will refigure our understanding of the history and politics of early modern England and the materials and methods of our study.

Preface; Directions: 1. Remapping early modern England: from revisionism to the culture of politics; 2. A commonwealth of meanings: languages, analogues, ideas and politics; Texts and Power: 3. The king's writ: royal authors and royal authority in early modern England; 4. Private conscience and public duty in the writings of James VI and I; 5. Private conscience and public duty in the writings of Charles I; Visions and Politics: 6. Stuart monarchy and political culture; 7. 'An image doting rabble': the failure of republicanism culture in seventeenth-century England; Rewritings: 8. Rewriting the history of Parliament in seventeenth-century England; 9. Rewriting Sir Robert Cotton: politics and history in early Stuart England; Re-Viewings: 10. Religion, rhetoric and revolution in seventeenth-century England; 11. Celebrating a cultural turn: political culture and cultural politics in early modern England; 12. Representations and negotiations: images, texts and authority in early modern England.

Kevin Sharpe proposes here a new cultural turn in the study of the English Renaissance state, and urges a broader interdisciplinary approach to the texts of authority, their performance and reception. This collection will help refigure our understanding of the history and politics of the period and its study.