Imaginary Betrayals: Subjectivity and the Discourses of Treason in Early Modern EnglandUniversity of Pennsylvania Press, 2013 M05 29 - 224 páginas In 1352 King Edward III had expanded the legal definition of treason to include the act of imagining the death of the king, opening up the category of "constructive" treason, in which even a subject's thoughts might become the basis for prosecution. By the sixteenth century, treason was perceived as an increasingly serious threat and policed with a new urgency. Referring to the extensive early modern literature on the subject of treason, Imaginary Betrayals reveals how and to what extent ideas of proof and grounds for conviction were subject to prosecutorial construction during the Tudor period. Karen Cunningham looks at contemporary records of three prominent cases in order to demonstrate the degree to which the imagination was used to prove treason: the 1542 attainder of Katherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII, charged with having had sexual relations with two men before her marriage; the 1586 case of Anthony Babington and twelve confederates, accused of plotting with the Spanish to invade England and assassinate Elizabeth; and the prosecution in the same year of Mary, Queen of Scots, indicted for conspiring with Babington to engineer her own accession to the throne. |
Dentro del libro
Resultados 1-5 de 93
... Trials (Treason)—England— History—16th century. 5. Law and literature—Hist0ry—16th century. 6. Subjectivig/ in literature. 7. Sex role in literature. 8. Betrayal in literature. 9. Law in literature. I. Title. II. Series. PR658. T77 C86 ...
... treason was perceived as an in creasingly serious threat, policed with a new urgency, and publicized with fresh intensity during the sixteenth century. To ensure that trials would gather attention, the Crown convened open arraignments ...
... trials.5 Since treason was defined as compassing the king's death in the imagination, trying a person for the crime would mean discovering or constructing an inward truth as it was manifest in the character and words of the accused ...
... trials. I want, however, to complement that work by bringing the trial genre ... trials particular questions of the relations between subjective and national ... treason. Close reading of the trials and plays allows us to see developing ...
... trials and plays that make up this study. As unstable as the notion of nationhood itself, even the term “treason” comes into use in legal rhetoric not to describe a specific act, but to single out a position relative to others and to ...
Contenido
1 | |
Imagining the Realm | 23 |
2 Female Fidelities on Trial | 40 |
3 Masculinity Affiliation and Rootlessness | 77 |
4 Secrecy and the Epistolary Self | 110 |
Conclusion | 141 |
Notes | 145 |
Works Cited | 187 |
Index | 203 |
Acknowledgments | 215 |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
Imaginary Betrayals: Subjectivity and the Discourses of Treason in Early ... Karen Cunningham Vista previa limitada - 2002 |
Imaginary Betrayals: Subjectivity and the Discourses of Treason in Early ... Karen Cunningham Sin vista previa disponible - 2002 |