16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Undissing Dissing Elizabeth, August 18, 2000
Walker's collection of essays is innovative but mainstream Renaissance scholarship, aimed not at settling biographical arguments about Elizabeth's life (in fact the books many distinguished essayists accept what virtually all historians believe about Elizabeth I--even the open-minded doubt that she was stupid enough to risk real intercourse with a lover) but at showing that not everybody in Tudor England worshipped her uncritically. Some, implicitly or--when it was safe--explicitly had criticisms to make and could wish for a different monarch. What I admire about this book, aside from the fascinating evidence that its writers adduce, much of which will come as news even to Renaissance scholars, is the cleverness of Walker's basic idea (a refreshing change from the usual "cult of Elizabeth"). It matters that not everybody thought Elizabeth a fairy queen, a Gloriana, a new Diana. Tudor politics and culture were complex, and Walker's team of writers can show this. I especially recommend the Tudor picture of Elizabeth as a giant ruffed bird. Ugh! So buy this book: it is clever, informative, often amusing, is based on meticulus scholarship, and has that wonderful bird. As the editor of a Renaissance journal (Spenser Studies), a member of the board of the Renaissance Society of America, and the author of two books, one edition, and two anthologies all dealing with the Renaissance I do know what I'm talking about. This is a fine collection. I give it four stars--reserving five for the Bible and Shakespeare.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Dissing" Clarifies "Blazoning", August 20, 2000
This book puts a useful perspective on the cult of Elizabeth I. During her own reign (1568-1603) she was praised to her face for her brilliance and lauded in the courtly terms of the day, but certainly resented and "dissed" by the ambitious men she frustrated. Although numerous poets praised her, blazing her beauty, brilliance, and blessedness as God's Protestant champion, other men resented her and tried to find a way to destroy the culture of devotion she inspired and encouraged.
The book itself respects Elizabeth a great deal, but expands usefully the context in which she was seen in her own time and immediately thereafter. A very fine and useful collection, certainly for scholars, but also for anyone interested in the Elizabethan period.
Susanne Woods, PhD
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6 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The Virgin Queen Defended, July 14, 2000
This review is from: Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana (Post-Contemporary Interventions) (Hardcover)
This series of essays shines no new light on the character and history of Queen Elizabeth I. Rather it simply repackages the Virgin Queen and the cult of Queen Elizabeth in the contemporary garb of feminist rhetoric.
The voluminous evidence that Elizabeth had an active love affair with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, is off handedly dismissed. The substantial amount of circumstantial evidence that Queen Elizabeth was a co-conspirator in the murder of Amy Robsart, Robert Dudley's wife is brushed aside by labeling it "the mysterious death of Dudley's wife" and then giving the hearsay comment, "though modern historians consider it most unlikely that Robert Dudley with or without the connivance of Elizabeth. Nor can we ever know the exact nature of Elizabeth's relationship with him."
This last statement is such a blatant distortion of the historical record that it can only be considered a deliberate falsehood. Contemporary Elizabethan accounts of Elizabeth and Robert Dudley indicate that Elizabeth was deeply in love with Robert Dudley, that she lived with openly at court sharing adjoining apartments, she entrusted him as Lord Protector of England when she was stricken by small pox and she mourned him at this death in 1588. Admitting that Elizabeth was deeply in love and involved with Robert Dudley would support gossip of the time that she bore children by him. This distortion of the historical record is necessary to keep intact the myth of the Virgin Queen.
There is simply no exhaustive inquiry into one of the most enigmatic questions of Elizabethan history: "Did Elizabeth have children?" This book does not further the inquiry an iota.
The Thomas Seymour affair of 1548 as presented in this book is another distortion of the historical record. Elizabethan historians have approached this matter by muting the facts, presenting various bits of the story in various books and then concluding that while Elizabeth may have been indiscreet, nothing of substance happened. In fact the historical record indicates that Elizabeth was "sick" in the summer of 1548 and there are substantive circumstances to indicate that Princess Elizabeth, age fourteen, gave birth to a child who was raised as Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford a.k.a. William Shakespeare.
"Dissing Elizabeth, Negative Representations of Gloriana" is inadequately titled. In order to fully describe its contents the title should continue "And A Stouthearted Defense of the Cult of Elizabeth and the Virgin Queen."
While there are many interesting facts and observations contained in these essays, they have to be sifted out from the bowdlerizing of one of the most fascinating, controversial and influential woman of the western world. Hopefully, there will someday be an adequate biography of this complex woman, but these essays certainly don't head in that direction.
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