The Catholic Imaginary and the Cults of Elizabeth, 1558}}}1582 [Hardcover]

Stephen Hamrick demonstrates how poets writing in the first part of Elizabeth I's reign proved instrumental in transferring Catholic worldviews and paradigms to the cults and early anti-cults of Elizabeth. Stephen Hamrick provides a detailed analysis of poets who used Petrarchan poetry to transform many forms of Catholic piety, ranging from confession and transubstantiation to sacred scriptures and liturgical singing, into a multivocal discourse used to fashion, refashion, and contest strategic political, religious, and courtly identities for the Queen and for other Court patrons. These poets, writers previously overlooked in many studies of Tudor culture, include Barnabe Googe, George Gascoigne, and Thomas Watson. Stephen Hamrick here shows that the nature of the religious reformations in Tudor England provided the necessary contexts required for Petrarchanism to achieve its cultural centrality and artistic complexity. This study makes a strong contribution to our understanding of the complex interaction among Catholicism, Petrachanism, and the second English Reformation.Contents: Introduction: reformations and reformulations; The Queen's court, the city, and Catholicism; Barnabe Googe and Elizabeth's barbed horse; The almoner and the queen; Gascoigne's royal confessions; Thomas Watson, the Earl of Oxford and Queen Elizabeth; Conclusion Reformation Petrarchanism and the cults of Elizabeth; Bibliography; Index.Stephen Hamrick provides a detailed analysis of how previously understudied Tudor poets, Barnabe Googe, George Gascoigne, and Thomas Watson, incorporated images of Catholic practice within Reformation Petrachanism for the celebration and containment of Elizabeth Tudor and other Court patrons.Stephen Hamrick is Associate Professor of English at Minnesota State University-Moorhead, USA.... a well-researched, exhaustively argued, highly readable and challenging scholarly work. It is essential to both academics and students interested in early Elizabethan Petrarlc�