Gloriana
Language: English
Part of speech: name
Etymology: Coined by English poet Edmund Spenser to represent Elizabeth I in his poem The Faerie Queene (1590), from Latin glōria (“glory”) + -āna, feminine of -ānus (“of or pertaining to”).
Senses: examples: text: In “The Sayings of Queen Elizabeth” (The Bodley Head; 16s.), Mr. Chamberlin deals very faithfully with a scandal that has nothing to do with sixteenth-century gossip about the Queen’s morals. It is a purely academic outrage: Froude’s Bowdlerisations of Gloriana’s good things, which the historian paraphrased loosely when he should have transcribed them accurately.
ref: 1924 February 23, J[ames] D[avid] Symon, “Books of the Day”, in The Illustrated London News, London: The Illustrated London News and Sketch, Ltd., page 321, column 1:
text: The cult of Gloriana was skilfully created to buttress public order and, even more, deliberately to replace the pre-Reformation externals of religion, the cult of the Virgin and saints with their attendant images, processions, ceremonies and secular rejoicing.
ref: 1977, Roy Strong, “Introduction: The Last Pageant”, in The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry, Berkeley, Calif.; Los Angeles, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISBN, part one (Three Portraits), page 16:
text: In Spanish eyes, the Great Elizabeth was neither ‘Gloriana’ nor ‘Good Queen Bess’, but ‘la inglesona’.
ref: 1990 November, Anthony Gooch, “The Falklands War and a Very Special Relationship: The Hispanic World and the Anglo-Saxon World: Part One”, in Betty Abel, editor, Contemporary Review, volume 257, number 1498, London: Contemporary Review Co., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 225:
text: In Hymnes to Astraea (1599) John Davies characterised Gloriana’s rule as captivating her subjects with an authority based on honour and ‘straight rule’: […]
ref: 1992, S.P. Cerasano, Marion Wynne-Davies, “‘From Myself, My Other Self I Turned’: An Introduction”, in Gloriana’s Face: Women, Public and Private, in the English Renaissance, Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, →ISBN, page 11:
text: After the early seventeenth century, such cruelty would never be seen again in England, but it was part and parcel of the reign of Gloriana and the gentlemen of the Privy Council kept it that way.
ref: 2001, M[eirion] J[ames] Trow, Taliesin Trow, “Machevill”, in Who Killed Kit Marlowe?: A Contract to Murder in Elizabethan England, Sutton Publishing, published 2002, →ISBN, page 150:
text: At first she was the aloof, mysterious beauty of the courtly love tradition, later the magnificent unattainable Virgin, Gloriana.
ref: 2003, David Loades, “The Great Queen”, in Elizabeth I, Hambledon and London, →ISBN, page 312:
synonyms: Good Queen Bess
Queen Bess
glosses: Sobriquet for Elizabeth I (1533–1603), Queen of England and Ireland.
examples: text: After Mr. Smith’s decease, she m. for a 2d husband, and as his 2d wife, Dr. George Muirson of Setauket, L. I. (son of Rev. George Muirson of Hempstead, L. I., and Gloriana Smith, dau. of Col. William Smith).
ref: 1874, Benjamin W[oodbridge] Dwight, The History of the Descendants of John Dwight, of Dedham, Mass., volume I, New York, N.Y.: John F. Trow & Son, […], page 1103:
text: The little stranger is named Gloriana Craig. She arrived on June 24, 1922.
ref: 1922, Union Electric Quarterly, page 20:
text: When I was the ripe age of 17, I met a girl named Gloriana at an out-of-state sports meet.
ref: 2002, Mary-Lou Galician, quoting Brent (name changed), Sex, Love, & Romance in the Mass Media: Analysis & Criticism of Unrealistic Portrayals & Their Influence, New York, N.Y.; London: Routledge, →ISBN, page 127:
text: Through an acquaintance with his mother’s neighbor, Robert Bourassa, he met a woman named Gloriana LaPointe.
ref: 2009, Edith Reynolds, John Murray, Wicked Waterbury: Madmen & Mayhem in the Brass City, The History Press, →ISBN:
glosses: A female given name.