Elizabeth I, the Subversion of Flattery, and John Lyly’s Court Plays and Entertainments

Inbunden, Engelska, 2021

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This study considers how John Lyly's characters who are allegorical representations of Elizabeth validate the queen, but at the same time raise troubling issues as to her true nature. Theodora Jankowski looks at both the light and the dark side of the Elizabeth character in each of Lyly's court plays, while at the same time considering how that allegory works in terms of the various issues Lyly debates within the plays. She reveals the fraught nature of John Lyly's relationship to Queen Elizabeth. He was not the first creative artist to introduce subversive undercurrents in entertainments designed to flatter the queen. However, Jankowski demonstrates how Lyly, while praising the queen and accepting her beneficence, simultaneously manages to present his audiences with the "dark queen", the opposite side of the positive image of the Queen of England.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2021-01-01
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor175
FörlagMedieval Institute Publications
ISBN9781580443333

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As a whole, Jankowski's book offers an interesting analysis of Lyly's plays that engages with some of the newest criticism of Lyly. . . . Jankowski suggests that in Lyly's plays he does represent the positive Elizabeth, but it is impossible not to find the dark Elizabeth. For Jankowski, the positives images always carry the negative images with them. This idea by itself is thought-provoking and gives pause to all of the overtly positive images of Elizabeth that were created during her reign. --Valerie Schutte, The Medieval Review, 19.11.22