Reading Tudor Writing Politically: The Case of 2 Henry IV

Author: Burrow, Colin

Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Volume 38, Numbers 1-2, 1 July 2008 , pp. 234-250(17)

Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association

Buy & download fulltext article:

Price: $21.27 plus tax (Refund Policy)

Abstract:

The first section presents a schematic model of early modern citizenship, which emphasizes the multiple dispersed centres of authority and allegiance of which members of the Tudor commonwealth would be aware. It argues that political readings of texts from this period should take more account than they have in the past of the large number of synchronic and diachronic relationships inhabited by early modern agents and writers. The second section relates this model to the Gloucestershire scenes in Shakespeare's 2 Henry IV, and shows how the scenes register anxieties about the conduct of justices in that county in the 1590s from the perspective of both commons and Privy Council.

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: University of Oxford

Publication date: 2008-07-01

More about this publication?

A supplement to the Modern Language Review, this journal includes articles and reviews on the language and literature of the English-speaking world. Most of the volumes published so far are 'Special Numbers', collections of between fifteen and eighteen commissioned articles on particular topics, such as the impact of the French Revolution on English writers; literature in the modern media; and colonial and imperial themes in literature.