Sixteenth century Elizabeth I of England has long been a figure of interest to
Renaissance scholars, and their work largely focuses on how her gender impacted the
power, politics, and culture of her day. Many have perceived her to be a heroine
whose ingenuity and determination circumvented the limitations imposed on a female
ruler in patriarchal Renaissance England. In my thesis, I examine the life and work of
Elizabeth I, and the self-representations she constructed within the boundaries
imposed on highborn women. In the first half of my thesis, I suggest that she
embraced and utilized the female roles available to her to secure agency and a degree
of safety for both herself and England. In the second half, I suggest that masculine
subjects such as Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser, in turn, sought to manipulate
her later self-representations to negotiate their own agency and identity which was
perceived to be beset with anxieties and biases stemming from the ageing Queen's
seizure and redefinition of the female gender role allotted to her. A chronological
examination of the self representations evident in her personal writing, commissioned
portraiture, parliamentary speeches, and sonnets, as well as the poetry of two of her
foremost masculine subjects, suggests a shift in gender politics and a tension roused
by an ageing Queen regnant in a rigidly patriarchal society. / Graduation date: 2012
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/28786 |
| Date | 20 March 2012 |
| Creators | Zinck, Jaime |
| Contributors | Barbour, Richmond |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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