QUEENSHIP AND POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN THE ELIZABETHAN REALMS.
Series: CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN BRITISH HISTORY
Publisher: CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS
Published: 2005
Place of publication: CAMBRIDGE
Language: und; eng
Number of pages: 311
Description: "This book re-evaluates the nature of Elizabethan politics and Elizabeth's queenship in late sixteenth-century England, Wales and Ireland. Natalie Mears shows that Elizabeth took an active role in policy-making and suggests that Elizabethan politics has to be perceived in terms of personal relations between the queen and her advisors rather than of the hegemony of the privy council. She challenges current perceptions of political debate at court as restricted and integrates recent research on court drama and religious ritual into the wider context of political debate. Finally, providing the first survey of the nature of political debate outside the court, Dr Mears challenges seminal work by Jürgen Habermas, as well as of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century historians, by showing that a 'public sphere' existed in late sixteenth-century England, Wales and Ireland. In doing so, she re-evaluates how sociologists and historians have, and should, conceptualise the 'public sphere'"--Provided by publisher.