to put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose, and plant this thorn, this canker Bolingbroke
I wrote 687 words of dissertation today! This after a rather lengthy hiatus. Granted, 280 words of that were involved in block quotes, but still, that means I wrote 407 words of dissertation, and the way things have been going, that is Nothing To Sneeze At.
I'm not sure what that brings the full total up to -- I've got it saved in bits and pieces, and I would have to total them all up, but I am lazy. But the Daniel chapter (as opposed to the introductory use of Daniel to illustrate the anxieties of Renaissance historiography) is now officially underway, which means that soon I get to write about Henry IV as propaganda master (there's a long passage about that in Book II of the 1595 Civil Wars), and that is never not fun.
And, speaking of Henry IV (as I so frequently do) -- I don't know why I have been posting so many Plantagenet family trees lately (they are a shocking percentage of my last few public posts), but this one is really cool and I felt it necessary to share it. It's from a genealogy of Edward IV put together in the 1460s, and I found it while randomly perusing the British Library's online gallery (which, btw, is PURE LOVE). Nobody has foliage coming out of their crotches (indeed, most people pictured here don't seem to actually have crotches per se), but there is much else to love about it. Also there are Funny Hats.
The man in black (heh) is Henry IV, chopping Richard II out of the family tree with what is undoubtedly the Omnipresent Usurpin' Sword. I wish I could read the labels at this resolution; I can make out bits of them (they are all, interestingly, first-person), but they're not very clear. I am convinced that the smudged-out bit on Henry IV's label reads "MWAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA."
For comparison, here's a bit of a Lancastrian genealogy from the mid-15th century, from a book presented to Henry VI and Queen Margaret:
That's Richard on the left and Henry on the right; the full page apparently pictures Henry VI's forebears two to a roundel, and the way Richard and Henry are depicted here, as Paul Strohm talks about at some length in England's Empty Throne, elides the break in the line of succession that the Yorkist illustration linked above dramatizes in striking fashion. Strohm's discussion connects the Lancastrian roundel to texts such as Hoccleve's poem on Henry V's reinterral of Richard as another effort to legitimize the Lancastrians by eliding the usurpation, in Hoccleve's case by connecting Henry V's reburial of Richard to his opposition to Lollardy, both placing him on the side of tradition and thus locating him firmly in...well, the line of succession (one of his points is that in the late Lancastrian texts that gesture at Richard II somehow, Henry IV pretty much vanishes entirely, and Richard gets emphasized as a sort of symbolic or even mystical father-figure to Henry V. Later on, of course, you get Yorkist pageantry that includes the figure of Richard II proclaiming that with the accession of Edward IV and perhaps even more so -- since this was the impetus for the particular pageant I'm quoting -- the birth of the future Edward V, "the right lyne of the Royall blode / ys now as itt schulde be").
And then, of course, once you get to the Tudors, that doesn't work either: one of the points I'm going to make in the diss is that the Tudor version of history requires the legitimation of Richard II and Henry IV, which is of course an insurmountable contradiction, and thus in visual representations what you get is illustrations of John of Gaunt and Edmund Langley with vines growing out of their bits. Which, you know, is good, too.
Oh, and speaking of Hoccleve, which we do less often around here, here is an illustration of him presenting a book to Henry Prince of Wales (aka the future Henry V, Prince Hal if you're nasty), possibly familiar as the source of the "Cheer Up, Emo Hoccleve" icon that is floating around lj medievalist circles. I like that Hal's expression totally says "Oh, not more didactic poetry."
I'm not sure what that brings the full total up to -- I've got it saved in bits and pieces, and I would have to total them all up, but I am lazy. But the Daniel chapter (as opposed to the introductory use of Daniel to illustrate the anxieties of Renaissance historiography) is now officially underway, which means that soon I get to write about Henry IV as propaganda master (there's a long passage about that in Book II of the 1595 Civil Wars), and that is never not fun.
And, speaking of Henry IV (as I so frequently do) -- I don't know why I have been posting so many Plantagenet family trees lately (they are a shocking percentage of my last few public posts), but this one is really cool and I felt it necessary to share it. It's from a genealogy of Edward IV put together in the 1460s, and I found it while randomly perusing the British Library's online gallery (which, btw, is PURE LOVE). Nobody has foliage coming out of their crotches (indeed, most people pictured here don't seem to actually have crotches per se), but there is much else to love about it. Also there are Funny Hats.
The man in black (heh) is Henry IV, chopping Richard II out of the family tree with what is undoubtedly the Omnipresent Usurpin' Sword. I wish I could read the labels at this resolution; I can make out bits of them (they are all, interestingly, first-person), but they're not very clear. I am convinced that the smudged-out bit on Henry IV's label reads "MWAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA."
For comparison, here's a bit of a Lancastrian genealogy from the mid-15th century, from a book presented to Henry VI and Queen Margaret:
That's Richard on the left and Henry on the right; the full page apparently pictures Henry VI's forebears two to a roundel, and the way Richard and Henry are depicted here, as Paul Strohm talks about at some length in England's Empty Throne, elides the break in the line of succession that the Yorkist illustration linked above dramatizes in striking fashion. Strohm's discussion connects the Lancastrian roundel to texts such as Hoccleve's poem on Henry V's reinterral of Richard as another effort to legitimize the Lancastrians by eliding the usurpation, in Hoccleve's case by connecting Henry V's reburial of Richard to his opposition to Lollardy, both placing him on the side of tradition and thus locating him firmly in...well, the line of succession (one of his points is that in the late Lancastrian texts that gesture at Richard II somehow, Henry IV pretty much vanishes entirely, and Richard gets emphasized as a sort of symbolic or even mystical father-figure to Henry V. Later on, of course, you get Yorkist pageantry that includes the figure of Richard II proclaiming that with the accession of Edward IV and perhaps even more so -- since this was the impetus for the particular pageant I'm quoting -- the birth of the future Edward V, "the right lyne of the Royall blode / ys now as itt schulde be").
And then, of course, once you get to the Tudors, that doesn't work either: one of the points I'm going to make in the diss is that the Tudor version of history requires the legitimation of Richard II and Henry IV, which is of course an insurmountable contradiction, and thus in visual representations what you get is illustrations of John of Gaunt and Edmund Langley with vines growing out of their bits. Which, you know, is good, too.
Oh, and speaking of Hoccleve, which we do less often around here, here is an illustration of him presenting a book to Henry Prince of Wales (aka the future Henry V, Prince Hal if you're nasty), possibly familiar as the source of the "Cheer Up, Emo Hoccleve" icon that is floating around lj medievalist circles. I like that Hal's expression totally says "Oh, not more didactic poetry."