Renaissance Representations of Katherine of Aragon
Date Issued
2006
Date
2006
Author(s)
Chiang, Yu-Chun
DOI
en-US
Abstract
In this thesis, I will explore different representations of Katherine of Aragon in Renaissance typology, chronicles, martyrology, and drama within the contexts of key events of her life. Initially, Katherine of Aragon was typologically configured as a good and virtuous woman according to the powerful historical and biblical models of Zenobia, Vashti, and Ester. Vives, Erasmus, and Elyot all appropriated these models to lend their support to Katherine as she attempted to represent herself to Henry’s court in the divorce trial. However, later in the contexts of the Edwardian reign, Edward Hall endorsed the legitimacy of Edward VI by endorsing Henry’s divorce from Katherine. In The Vnion, Katherine was an object for Hall to illustrate Henry VIII’s wise and prosperous reign. Hall’s historical writing was apathetic to the representation of Katherine, while Raphael Holinshed’s The Chronicles was equivocal. Writing his chronicles in Elizabethan England, Holinshed not only provided negative images of a stubborn and defiant Katherine, undermining her marriage with Henry VIII, in order to endorse the legitimacy of Elizabeth I, but also depicted positive images of an articulate and virtuous Katherine, demonstrating women’s ability in politics, to confirm Elizabeth’s ability to rule. Compared to Hall and Holinshed, John Foxe, as a campaigner of Elizabethan Reformation, infused stronger Protestant propaganda into his descriptions of Katherine in the Actes and Monuments. In Foxe’s martyrological representation, the stubborn, unreasonable and angry Roman Catholic Queen Katherine impeded England’s progress toward order, while the obedient, virtuous and Protestant Queen Anne Boleyn assisted England in building the true Church of Christ. The contexts of the typological, historical and martyrological representations of Jacobean England are all accommodated in Shakespeare and Fletcher’s representation of a dramatically powerful Katherine in King Henry VIII: All is True. In the play, Katherine dominates Henry VIII’s court spatially, acts as the subjects’ spokesperson, and manipulates woman’s virtue and weakness to defy injustice and authority. Even after she is deposed, Katherine remains powerful in her own domestic court, and overshadows the new Queen Anne Boleyn. Although Katherine is dispelled from King Henry’s court, she is, through the insertion of a fictional dream vision, able to enter God’s court and retrieve her queenship. In the process of explaining representations of Katherine, this thesis will also demonstrate the possibilities and limitations of the generic modes of representation themselves. The Renaissance representations of Katherine of Aragon set up a pattern of a new kind of self-articulating woman, yet one who retains her virtues: one who may disobey secular authority yet retain her Christian virtue.
Subjects
凱瑟琳•亞拉岡
再現
皇后
女性研究
湯瑪斯•艾略特《The Defence of Good Women》(1545)
以斯帖記(1560年日內瓦聖經、1609年杜埃版舊約聖經)
《A New Enterlude of Godly Queene Hester》(1561)
愛德華•霍爾編年史(1550)
拉斐爾•何林塞《史記》(1577年版、 1587年版)
威廉•莎士比亞與約翰•傅萊徹《亨利八世》
Katherine of Aragon
Representations
Queenship
Woman Study
English Renaissance
Genres (Typology, Chronicle, Martyrology, History Play)
Book of Ester (1560 Geneva Bible, 1609 Douai Old Testament)
A New Enterlude of Godly Queene Hester (1561)
Type
thesis