Women and Cultures of Portraiture in the British Literary Renaissance
The Arden Shakespeare (Verlag)
978-1-350-32070-3 (ISBN)
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Were Renaissance women merely the silent subjects of the images of themselves they witnessed circulating in the visual cultures around them? Or did they have the opportunity to challenge these figurations? This collection of interdisciplinary essays examines the representation of women at the intersections between portraiture, literature and drama in Renaissance Britain. It explores how power, politics, patronage, agency and creativity were manifested across text, cultural inscription and ‘portraiture’ - defined in its broadest sense as a cultural artefact expressive of female image and identity. Forms of ‘portraiture’ discussed in this vibrant collection include portraits, miniatures, engravings, sculptures, embroideries, tapestries, murals, emblems, illuminated manuscripts, reliquaries, curated collections, theatrical props, calligraphy and other decorative features.
Bringing together art historians, curators, heritage specialists and scholars of early modern history, drama and literature, this collection situates women both as the subjects and devisers of ‘cultures of portraiture’. The essays in this volume examine how power was negotiated through the royal icon; how self-portraiture became a means of navigating the dangerous worlds of religious and courtly factionalism; how the commissioning, collecting and curating of paintings, relics and life-writings fashioned shared testaments of faith and enabled female networks across political and pedagogical arenas; how drama staged the anxieties surrounding a threatening female agency; and how creativity wielded through narrative prose fiction, illuminated manuscripts and poetry, allowed women to co-opt and subvert prevailing visual tropes and stereotypes. In the process, it reveals how women were both the interrogators and active co-creators of their own self-images, re-defining their ‘portraits’ as forms of public identity-building and political commentary, as well as tools for social disruption and the realization of their dynastic ambitions.
Yasmin Arshad is Honorary Research Fellow, Centre for Early Modern Exchanges,School of European Languages, Culture & Society, University College London, UK. Chris Laoutaris is Senior Lecturer at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK.
Notes on Contributors
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Towards an Activist Intermediality: The Legacies of Portraiture’s Feminisms
Yasmin Arshad (University College London, UK) and Chris Laoutaris (The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK)
Part 1: Negotiating Royal Power: Propaganda, Encryption and the Visual Rhetoric of Persuasion
1. Susanna Horenbout and the Politics of Illumination at the Court of Henry VIII
Susan E. James (Independent Scholar and Art Historian, UK)
2. Joint Iconography for Joint Sovereigns: Mary Queen of Scots, James VI of Scotland, and the Campaign for the Association, c. 1578–1584
Susan Doran (Jesus College, University of Oxford, UK) and Paulina Kewes (Jesus College, University of Oxford, UK)
3. Elizabeth I at Sixty
Helen Hackett (University College London, UK) and Karen Hearn (University College London, UK; formerly Curator of 16th- and 17th-Century British Art at Tate Britain, UK)
4. “Still Renewing Wronges”?: Politics, Identity and Encryption in Gheeraerts’ ‘Persian Lady’ Portrait
Chris Laoutaris (The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK) and Yasmin Arshad (University College London, UK)
5. ‘A Moor to a Maiden’: The Presence of Black Africans in the Portraiture of Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth
Ana Howie (Cornell University, USA)
Part 2: Inter-Visual Interventions: Identity, Agency and Confrontations with the Self
6. Embroidery and Self-Portraiture
Jane Stevenson (Campion Hall, University of Oxford, UK)
7. The dead shadow: Portraiture, Murder and Female agency in the early modern dumb show
Keir Elam (University of Bologna, Italy)
8. Capitalizing on Beauty: Blazons and Portraiture in Early Modern English Verse
Jaime Goodrich (Wayne State University, Michigan, USA)
9. The Portrait of a Lady from the Islamic World in Early Modern England: ‘Teresia, Countess Shirley’, by William Larkin, c. 1611–1
Bernadette Andrea (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
10. Flights of Fancy and Practical Matters: Creativity in Self-Portraiture of Margaret Cavendish and Hannah Woolley
Anna (Anya) Riehl Bertolet (Auburn University, USA)
Part 3: Visualizing Women’s Networks: Patronage, Curating and Collecting
11. Catholicae Virgines nos Sumus Mutare vel Tempore Spernimus: Helena Wintour’s Subversive Embroideries
Janet Graffius (Curator of Collections and Historic Libraries, Stonyhurst, UK)
12. Mary Ward and the Figuring of Female Networks
Caroline Bicks (University of Maine, USA)
13. Locating the Cavendish women in Ben Jonson’s The New Inn and the murals at Bolsover Castle
Crosby Stevens (University of Sheffield; formerly Curator of Art for English Heritage, UK)
14. Richard Crashaw’s Lady Margaret Beaufort in the Liber Memorialis at St John’s College, Cambridge
Anna Clark (University of Oxford and the National Portrait Gallery, UK)
Select Bibliography
Index
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 28.5.2026 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | Arden Studies in Early Modern Material Culture |
| Mitarbeit |
Herausgeber (Serie): Catherine Richardson, Prof Evelyn Tribble, Helen Smith |
| Zusatzinfo | 16 colour, 44 bw illus |
| Verlagsort | London |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 156 x 234 mm |
| Themenwelt | Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Kunstgeschichte / Kunststile |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik | |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft | |
| Sozialwissenschaften | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-350-32070-6 / 1350320706 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-350-32070-3 / 9781350320703 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
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