Royalist Identities shifts the emphasis from the question 'What is Royalism?' to 'What did Royalism want to be?' The texts analyzed show how Royalism was concerned with the construction of a set of binary roles and behavioural models designed to perpetuate a certain paradigm of social stability. de Groot deploys theories of identity to analyze the literature and culture of this important period- including the works of Milton, Marvell, Herrick and Cowley, amongst others - and in particular to discuss the formation and construction of an ideologically inflected cultural and social identity.

Autorentext

JEROME DE GROOT has lectured in English at the University of Huddersfield, University of Wales, Bangor and University College, Dublin. He has published chapters in books and articles in The Seventeenth Century and The English Historical Review, and held research fellowships at Oxford, Harvard, UCLA and the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Zusammenfassung
The emergence of a sustained opposition to monarchical structures of authority during the 1640s necessitated a wholesale redefinition of self and the nation, and this period is therefore of paramount importance in the study of early modern identity. The civil war marks a decisive shift in the discourse of self and the notion of the subject within nation. As this innovative study shows, the Parliamentary enemy was seen by Royalists to have transgressed existing definitions of the law, social identity, religion, and models of authority. Royalist Identities analyzes the reaction of the centre and mainstream to these subversive challenges, illustrating how orthodoxy attempts to legitimate itself once under stress and perceived serious threat. The book examines several modes of identity, from simplistic representational notions of 'difference' and otherness, through institutional and state-led constructions of legal subjectivity, towards more complex and normative notions of the relationship between self, text and state, concluding with an examination of dissident and different identities within Royalism.

Inhalt

Acknowledgements Abbreviations Preface Introduction 'But the Picture, but the signe of a King': The Legal Space of Self and Nation The Royalist Reader 'The late strangenesse betweeene us': Invasion, Excrement and Recognition Gorgeous Gorgons: Royalist Women Fragmentation of the Body and the End of Identity Notes Bibliography Index