Stuart Succession Literature: Moments and Transformations

Moments of royal succession, which punctuate the Stuart era (1603-1714), occasioned outpourings of literature. Writers, including most of the major figures of the seventeenth century from Jonson, Daniel, and Donne to Marvell, Dryden, and Behn, seized upon these occasions: to mark the transition of power; to reflect upon the political structures and values of their nation; and to present themselves as authors worthy of patronage and recognition. This volume of essays explores this important category of early modern writing. It contends that succession literature warrants attention as a distinct category: appreciated by contemporaries, acknowledged by a number of scholars, but never investigated in a coherent and methodical manner, it helped to shape political reputations and values across the period. Benefitting from the unique database of such writing generated by the AHRC-funded Stuart Successions Project, the volume brings together a distinguished group of authors to address a subject which is of wide and growing interest to students both of history and of literature. It illuminates the relation between literature and politics in this pivotal century of English political and cultural history. Interdisciplinary in scope, the volume will be indispensable to scholars of early modern British literature and history as well as undergraduates and postgraduates in both fields.

Table of Contents:
Paulina Kewes and Andrew McRae: Introduction PART I. MOMENTS 1: Richard A. McCabe: Panegyric and Its Discontents: The First Stuart Succession 2: Alastair Bellany: Writing the King's Death: The Case of James I 3: Steven N. Zwicker: 'He seems a king by long succession born': The Problem of Cromwellian Accession and Succession 4: Christopher Highley: Charles II and the Meanings of Exile 5: Helmer Helmers: 1685 and the Battle for Dutch Public Opinion: Succession Literature from a Transnational Perspective 6: John West: 'A great Romance feigned to raise wonder': Literature and the Making of the 1689 Succession 7: Joseph Hone: The Last Stuart Coronation PART II. TRANSFORMATIONS 8: Paulina Kewes: 'The Idol of State Innovators and Republicans': Robert Persons's A Conference About the Next Succession (1594/5) in Stuart England 9: Andrew McRae: Welcoming the King: The Politics of Stuart Succession Panegyric 10: David Colclough: 'I have brought thee up to a Kingdome': Sermons on the Accessions of James I and Charles I 11: Henry Power: 'Eyes without Light': University Volumes and the Politics of Succession 12: Jane Rickard: Stuart Coronations in Seventeenth-Century Scotland: History, Appropriation, and the Shaping of Cultural Identity 13: Ian W. Archer: Royal Entries, the City of London, and the Politics of Stuart Successions 14: R. Malcolm Smuts: Royal Mothers, Sacred History, and Political Polemic 15: B. J. Cook: 'Stampt with your own Image': The Numismatic Dimension of Two Stuart Successions 16: Mark Knights: The Loyal Address: Prose Panegyric, 1658-1715 17: Paul Hammond: Afterword: The Disenchantment of Monarchy

About the Author :
Paulina Kewes is Professor of English Literature and Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. She is the author of This Great Matter of Succession: England's Debate, 1553-1603 (forthcoming from Oxford University Press) and Authorship and Appropriation: Writing for the Stage in England, 1660-1710 (1998), and editor or co-editor of: Plagiarism in Early Modern England (2003), The Uses of History in Early Modern England (2006), The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles (2013) and Doubtful and Dangerous: The Question of Succession in Late Elizabethan England (2014). She is working on a study of monarchy and counsel on the early Elizabethan stage. Andrew McRae is Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Exeter. His works on the literature and cultural history of early modern England include: God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500-1660 (1996), Literature, Satire and the Early Stuart State (2004), and Literature and Domestic Travel in Early Modern England (2009). He is co-editor of Early Stuart Libels: An Edition of Poetry from Manuscript Sources and is collaborating on a new scholarly edition of Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion. Professor McRae is Dean of the Exeter Doctoral College.

Review :
This volume is a fine example of contemporary early modern studies. The essays collected in this volume offer an expansive, engaging, and significant resource...This volume will prove incredibly valuable to students and scholars looking at the implementation of soft power both imagined and actual. Each of the sixteen essays in the collection will prove significant ... Stuart Succession Literature is a powerful book in the revisionist tradition. The diversity of the material examined here is one of the strengths of the volume, and builds on the monumental scholarship of Kevin Sharpe, to whom the collection is dedicated. This is a stimulating volume that maintains excellent standards of scholarship throughout, despite the relatively large number of contributors. Stuart Succession Literature is a powerful book in the revisionist tradition. Stuart Succession Literature is the crowning output of a 4-year AHRC-funded project... [A] particular strength is the sustained attention in many chapters to the use and re-use of texts over time, not infrequently for partisan ends. Stuart Succession Literature makes visible once more just how prevalent were the concerns of early modern kingship and succession in the literary imagination. The all-star team of contributing scholars invites high expectations and amply fulfills them. [T]he volume is a series of thoroughly engaging and impressive essays that leaves a reader in no doubt that Stuart successions mattered and that many important areas surrounded successions and succession literature remain to be pursued.