- Department: History
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: M
- Academic year of delivery: 2024-25
How was the exercise of power represented in early modern England? Since the publication of Roy Strong’s Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I in 1963, successive generations of historians have been documenting and analysing the many ways in which the rulers and elites of early modern England justified their hold on power. From portraits to pageantry, printed propaganda to royal ritual, architecture to sacred music, claims have been made about the effectiveness of magnificence and persuasion in securing the compliance of a society undergoing profound and unsettling change. The perception of power, it has been suggested, may have been as important as its reality. But arguments like these are also subject to challenge. Have historians been seduced by the sheer splendour of early modern courts and country houses, or misled into believing in the political potency of English Renaissance art and culture simply because it was beautiful? How can we find ways to assess such sources dispassionately, as they were understood at the time?
Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this module asks how power was represented under the royal and republican regimes which ruled England/Britain between the end of the fifteenth and the mid-seventeenth centuries. Following a series of case studies of Tudor rulers, we explore the significance of royal progresses, ritual and liturgy, and the palaces and elite houses which were such a feature of the English landscape during this period. We conclude with contrasting perspectives from the seventeenth century, the iconography of the republican regime established following the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the King’s posthumous construction as a martyr.
Occurrence | Teaching period |
---|---|
A | Semester 2 2024-25 |
The aims of this module are to:
Students who complete this module successfully will:
Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1. Students will then attend a 2-hour seminar in weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing (RAW) weeks during which there are no seminars, and during which students research and write a formative essay, consulting with the module tutor. Students prepare for eight seminars in all.
Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
None
Students submit a 2,000-word formative essay in week 9.
A 4,000-word summative essay will be due in the assessment period.
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
Students will typically receive written feedback on their formative essay within 10 working days of submission.
Work will be returned to students in their seminars and may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss the feedback on their formative essay during their tutor’s student hours—especially during week 11, before, that is, they finalise their plans for the Summative Essay.
For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.
For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.
For reading during the module, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading: