HIS 218 & REL 218 Church History II: Reformation to the Present

The reign of Elizabeth I was marked by change: England finally became a protestant nation, and England's relations with her neighbours were also changing. Her reign was also significant in terms of changing gender expectations, and in terms of attitudes towards those considered different. Levin evaluates Elizabeth and the significance of her reign both in the context of her age and our own, examining the increasing cultural diversity of Elizabethan England and the impact of the reign of an unmarried queen on gender expectations, as well as exploring the more traditional themes of religion, foreign policy, plots and conspiracies. Levin's fresh perspective will be welcomed by students of this exceptional reign.

This book is on Elizabeth's formative years--from her birth in 1533 to her accession in 1558--and shows how the experiences of danger and adventure formed her remarkable character and shaped her opinions and beliefs. From princess and heir-apparent to bastardized and disinherited royal, accused traitor to head of the princely household, Elizabeth experienced every vicissitude of fortune and extreme of condition--and rose above it all to reign during a watershed moment in history.

This book is about the politics and political culture of the "last decade" of the reign of Elizabeth I, in effect the years 1585 to 1603. It takes a critical and provocative look at the declining Virgin Queen. Many teachers and their students have failed to consider the "last decade" in its own right, or have ignored it, having begun their accounts in 1558 and struggled on to the defeat of the Armada in 1588. Only two major political surveys have been attempted since 1926. Neither allots adequate space to Crown patronage, Puritanism and religion, society and the economy, political thought, and literature and drama.

This book examines the many afterlives the Virgin Queen has lived in drama, poetry, fiction, painting, propaganda, and the cinema over the fourcenturies since her death, from the aspiringly epic to the frankly kitsch. Exploring the Elizabeths of Shakespeare and Spenser, of Sophia Lee and Sir Walter Scott, of Bette Davis and of Glenda Jackson, of Shakespeare in Love and Blackadder II, this is a lively, lavishly-illustrated investigation ofEngland's perennial fascination with a queen who is still engaged in a posthumous progress through the collective pysche of her country.

A dual portrait of England's Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots documents their complex relationship, different characteristics, and ideals, and discusses their reigns, power struggle, and influence on British history.