The essays in this book (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) traverse two centuries of queens and their afterlives—historical, mythological, and literary. They speak of the significant and subtle ways that queens leave their mark on the culture they inhabit, focusing on gender, marriage, national identity, diplomacy, and representations of queens in literature. Elizabeth I looms large in this volume, but the interrogation of queenship extends from Elizabeth's historical counterparts, such as Anne Boleyn and Catherine de Medici, to her fictional echoes in the pages of John Lyly, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Mary Wroth, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish.
Celebrating and building on the renowned scholarship of Carole Levin, Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies exemplifies a range of innovative approaches to examining women and power in the early modern period.
​
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: Studies of Queens in Honor of Carole Levin, Anna Riehl Bertolet
​
I. Prelude: Studying Queens
2. Queenship and Power: The Heart and Stomach of a Book Series, Charles Beem
​
II. Queens and Matters of Gender
3. Did Elizabeth's Gender Really Matter? Susan Doran
4. A Great Reckoning in a Little Room: Elizabeth, Essex, and Royal Interruptions, Catherine Loomis
5. "We are such stuff": Absolute Feminine Power vs. Cinematic Myth-Making in Julie Taymor's Tempest (2010), Kirilka Stavreva
​
III. Queens and Marriage
6. Elizabeth I and the Marriage Crisis, John Lyly's Campaspe, and the Politics of Court Drama, Jane Donawerth
7. Tudor Consorts: The Politics of Royal Matchmaking, 1483-1543, Retha Warnicke
8. The Queen's Deathbed Wish in Early Modern Fairy Tales: Securing the Dynasty, Jo Eldridge Carney
​
IV. Queens and Religion
9. Spenser's Dragon Fight and the English Queen: The Struggle over the Elizabethan Settlement, Donald Stump
10. Anne Boleyn's Legacy to Elizabeth I: Neoclassicism and the Iconography of Protestant Queenship, Helen Hackett
11. "A Network of Honor and Obligation": Elizabeth as Godmother, Elaine Kruise
​
V. Queens, National Identity, and Diplomacy
12. Lesbianism in Early Modern Vernacular Romance: The Question of Historicity, John Watkins
13. Doppelganger Queens: Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart, Anna Riehl Bertolet
14. Elizabeth I and the Politics of Invoking Russia in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, Linda Shenk
15. Queen Elizabeth I and Elizabethan Court in the French Ambassador's Eyes, Estelle Paranque
​
VI. Inspired by the Queen: Queens in Literature
16. Queen of Love--Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Wroth, Ilona Bell
17. Dressing Queens (and Some Others): Signifying through Clothing in Wroth's Countess of Montgomery's Urania, Mary Ellen Lamb
18. Conjuring Three Queens and an Empress: The Philosophy of Enchantment in Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World, Brandie Siegfried
​