The Face of Queenship: Early Modern Representations of Elizabeth I

By Anna Riehl (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan 2010) (View/Purchase)

The Face of Queenship investigates the aesthetic, political, and gender-related meanings in representations of Elizabeth I by her contemporaries. By attending to eyewitness reports, poetry, portraiture, and discourses on beauty and cosmetics, this book shows how the portrayals of the queen's face register her contemporaries' hopes, fears, hatreds, mockeries, rivalries, and awe. In its application of the theories of the meaning of the face and its exploration of the early modern representation of faces, this study argues that the face was seen as a rhetorical tool and that Elizabeth was a master of using her face to persuade, threaten, or comfort her subjects.

    Table of Contents:

• Acknowledgements
• List of Illustrations
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• I. Plain Queen, Gorgeous King: Tudor Royal Faces
• II. "Let nature paint your beauty's glory": Beauty and Cosmetics
• III. Meeting the Queen: Documentary Accounts
• IV. "Mirrors more than one": Elizabeth's Literary Faces
• V. Portraiture: The Painted Texts of Elizabeth's Faces
  • Part I: Elizabeth and Hilliard
  • Part II: Augmenting the Canon
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index