The Cult of Elizabeth
Oct. 10th, 2012 12:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliThe Cult of Elizabeth by Roy Strong
An account of the pageantry and symbolism about the Elizabethan court.
The first parts deal with three surviving paintings and their imagery. The parts about trying to identify the faces, particularly when you have only other portraits to go by, was rather dry, But the iconography was interesting.
More interesting was the second part, which covers ceremony. The Accession Day celebrations, and other festivities that revolved about the queen, and replaced such mere pagan festivities as, say, Christmas and Easter. The tilts and all the ceremony and spectacle involved -- and the elaborate imagery deployed by the knights' disguises out of the chivalric romances. The difficulty of decyphering their impressa, with the shield and motto. The mythological imagery deployed about Elizabeth. And the Order of the Garter, still on St. George's day despite the whole Protestant bit, and the ceremonies there.
An account of the pageantry and symbolism about the Elizabethan court.
The first parts deal with three surviving paintings and their imagery. The parts about trying to identify the faces, particularly when you have only other portraits to go by, was rather dry, But the iconography was interesting.
More interesting was the second part, which covers ceremony. The Accession Day celebrations, and other festivities that revolved about the queen, and replaced such mere pagan festivities as, say, Christmas and Easter. The tilts and all the ceremony and spectacle involved -- and the elaborate imagery deployed by the knights' disguises out of the chivalric romances. The difficulty of decyphering their impressa, with the shield and motto. The mythological imagery deployed about Elizabeth. And the Order of the Garter, still on St. George's day despite the whole Protestant bit, and the ceremonies there.