Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation

Rating:
Summary: An exciting look at Elizabeth's courtiers as critics.
Review: Frye's study of Elizabeth's struggle to control her iconography and representation is very powerful. She discusses three major events in the course of Elizabeth's reign, and how merchants, courtiers and poets represented Elizabeth through them: praising her glory and virtue, yet simultaneously taking the critical liberties of a patriarchal society over a woman.

Frye's third chapter on "Engendered Violence" is especially revealing, whether or not we can fully accept the extremity of such criticism in the character of Britomart in Spenser's Faerie Queene.

This book is wonderful, a necessary read for anyone interested in the force of gender in the Renaissance.