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The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles

Online ISBN:
9780191750533
Print ISBN:
9780199565757
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles

Felicity Heal (ed.),
Felicity Heal
(ed.)
History, Jesus College, University of Oxford
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Felicity Heal is an Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. She is the author of numerous books and articles on the Reformation, the English gentry, and early modern society. Her book on Reformation in Britain and Ireland was published in 2003 as part of The Oxford History of the Christian Church. Her most recent book is The Power of Gifts: Gift-Exchange in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

Ian W. Archer (ed.),
Ian W. Archer
(ed.)
History, Keble College, Oxford
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Ian W. Archer has since 1991 been Fellow and Tutor in History at Keble College, Oxford. He is the author of The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London (1991) and numerous articles on the social and cultural history of early modern London. He has most recently edited (with Douglas Price) English Historical Documents 1558–1603 (2011) and is now working on a general history of early modern London for publication by OUP. He is a Literary Director of the Royal Historical Society.

Paulina Kewes (ed.)
Paulina Kewes
(ed.)
English Literature, Jesus College, Oxford
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Paulina Kewes is a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Jesus College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She has published widely on early modern literature, history, and politics. Her books include Authorship and Appropriation: Writing for the Stage in England, 1660-1710 (1998), This Great Matter of Succession: Politics, History, and Elizabethan Drama (forthcoming) and, as editor or co-editor, Plagiarism in Early Modern England (2003), The Uses of History in Early Modern England (2006), The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles (2013), and Doubtful and Dangerous: The Question of Succession in Late Elizabethan England (2014). She is a Co-Investigator on the major AHRC-funded Stuart Successions project.

Published online:
28 January 2013
Published in print:
27 December 2012
Online ISBN:
9780191750533
Print ISBN:
9780199565757
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577, 1587), issued under the name of Raphael Holinshed, was the crowning achievement of Tudor historiography, and became the principal source for the historical writings of Spenser, Daniel and, above all, Shakespeare. While scholars have long been drawn to Holinshed for its qualities as a source, they typically dismissed it as a baggy collection of materials, lacking coherent form and analytical insight. This condescending verdict has only recently given way to an appreciation of the literary and historical qualities of these chronicles. The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles is a major interdisciplinary undertaking which gives the lie to Holinshed's detractors, and provides original interpretations of a book that has lacked sustained academic scrutiny. Bringing together specialists in a variety of fields – literature, history, religion, classics, bibliography, and the history of the book – the text demonstrates that the Chronicles powerfully reflect the nature of Tudor thinking about the past, about politics and society, and about the literary and rhetorical means by which readers might be persuaded of the truth of narrative. It shows how distinctive it was for one book to chronicle the history of three nations of the British archipelago. The various sections of the book analyse the making of the two editions of the Chronicles; the relationship of the work to medieval and early modern historiography; its formal properties, genres, and audience; attitudes to politics, religion, and society; literary appropriations; and the parallel descriptions and histories of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. The result is a study that shows the vitality and complexity of the chronicle form in the late sixteenth century.

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