Imaging Stuart Family Politics: Dynastic Crisis and Continuity

Author:   Catriona Murray ,  Dr. Allison Levy
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Edition:   New edition
ISBN:  

9781472424051


Pages:   230
Publication Date:   14 July 2016
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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Imaging Stuart Family Politics: Dynastic Crisis and Continuity


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Overview

From conception onwards, Stuart offspring were presented to their subjects through texts, images and public celebrations. Audiences were exhorted to share in their development, establishing affective bonds with the royal family and its latest additions. Yet inviting the public into Stuart domestic affairs exposed them to intense scrutiny and private interactions were endowed with public dimensions. Images of royal children had the potential both to support and to undermine dynastic messages. In Imaging Stuart Family Politics, Catriona Murray explores the promotion of Stuart familial propaganda through the figure of the royal child. Bringing together royal ritual, court portraiture and popular prints, she offers a distinctive perspective on this crucial dimension of seventeenth-century political culture, exploring the fashioning and dismantling of reproductive imagery, as well as the vital role of visual display within these dialogues. This wide-ranging study will appeal to scholars of Stuart cultural, political and social history.

Full Product Details

Author:   Catriona Murray ,  Dr. Allison Levy
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Edition:   New edition
Dimensions:   Width: 17.40cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 24.60cm
Weight:   0.725kg
ISBN:  

9781472424051


ISBN 10:   1472424050
Pages:   230
Publication Date:   14 July 2016
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

Contents: List of Illustrations Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Genealogical Table of the Royal House of Stuart Introduction 1 ‘Happy issue’: Births, baptisms and babes-in-arms 2 A nation’s sons: Promoting the royal youth 3 ‘Joy turned to mourning’: Princely deaths, private loss and public grief 4 A troubled inheritance: Re-negotiating familial imagery 5 ‘Royal youth’s last legacy’: Enduring memories and evolving afterlives Conclusion Bibliography Index

Reviews

'Murray offers a lucid and fascinating account of the relationship between representation and dynastic politics by focussing on visual depictions of the heirs and spares of Stuart and Hanoverian Britain. Drawing on a very wide range of portraits, prints and documentary sources, this important study shows that historians should not dismiss the on-going political significance of the procession of lost hopes that the Stuart family - and the nation - endured over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Murray shows how the continuing memorialisation of lost Princes, especially Henry, Prince of Wales and Henry, Duke of Gloucester, brought them undying roles as models or mirrors of ideal Protestant kingship. Since none of these figures had faced the reality of rule, the uncompromised ideals that they represented were impossible to live up to; their memories served as a critique of surviving descendants and their governments, expressed in the rueful proverb that asked how things might be better Did not Good Prince Henry die .' Angela McShane, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 'Murray's book provides a compelling account of the potent visual, ceremonial and textual representations of royal progeny - dynasty - in the Stuart period. She convincingly demonstrates how these representations were strategically crafted and deployed to promote political agendas and royal sovereignty. These were not static images made to passively record family and issue. As Murray shows, they were living images of dynastic ambition that necessitated, in varying degrees, both continuity and transformation, being re-negotiated to respond to the changing political landscape. Combining insightful iconographic analyses of portraits, vivid ceremonial accounts, relish in material display and a nuanced understanding of the complex political situation, this far-reaching book is a welcome contribution to the literature on the Stuart court.' Erin Griffey, The University of Auckland, New Zealand 'This is a nuanced and original account of Stuart familial and dynastic propaganda, particularly in the context of the inevitable but shocking early deaths of promising young princes. Murray explores in fascinating detail the wide range of visual representations and other forms of material culture used by the Stuart family, courtiers and the wider public in response to the shifting and sometimes conflicting demands of personal grief, public mourning and national stability.' Catharine MacLeod, National Portrait Gallery, London, UK


'Murray offers a lucid and fascinating account of the relationship between representation and dynastic politics by focussing on visual depictions of the heirs and spares of Stuart and Hanoverian Britain. Drawing on a very wide range of portraits, prints and documentary sources, this important study shows that historians should not dismiss the on-going political significance of the procession of lost hopes that the Stuart family - and the nation - endured over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Murray shows how the continuing memorialisation of lost Princes, especially Henry, Prince of Wales and Henry, Duke of Gloucester, brought them undying roles as models or mirrors of ideal Protestant kingship. Since none of these figures had faced the reality of rule, the uncompromised ideals that they represented were impossible to live up to; their memories served as a critique of surviving descendants and their governments, expressed in the rueful proverb that asked how things might be better Did not Good Prince Henry die .' Angela McShane, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 'Murray's book provides a compelling account of the potent visual, ceremonial and textual representations of royal progeny - dynasty - in the Stuart period. She convincingly demonstrates how these representations were strategically crafted and deployed to promote political agendas and royal sovereignty. These were not static images made to passively record family and issue. As Murray shows, they were living images of dynastic ambition that necessitated, in varying degrees, both continuity and transformation, being re-negotiated to respond to the changing political landscape. Combining insightful iconographic analyses of portraits, vivid ceremonial accounts, relish in material display and a nuanced understanding of the complex political situation, this far-reaching book is a welcome contribution to the literature on the Stuart court.' Erin Griffey, The University of Auckland, New Zealand


Author Information

Catriona Murray is a lecturer in the History of Art at the University of Edinburgh.

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