Alterations of State

During the English reformation, writers like John Skelton, Shakespeare, John Milton, and Andrew Marvell grappled with the idea of kingship and royalty, its real presence and figurative power. Viewed in conjunction with artistic and architectural representations of the crown, these writers reveal the passion and ambivalence with which the English viewed their royal leaders, and helps us understand why these conflicting emotions have proven so persistent. McCoy explains why religious devotion to the royal person became both more acute and more problematic during England’s turbulent seventeenth century. The reformation involved the suppression of the Mass and the host and the elevation in their stead of royal icons, beginning a religious controversy that would lead to wars of conquest abroad and civil war at home, and to regicide, restoration and ultimately revolution.

Author Biography

Richard McCoy is professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and at Queens College. He is the author of The Rites of Knighthood: The Literature and Politics of Elizabethan Chivalry, and Sir Philip Sidney: Rebellion in Arcadia.