Materializing Space at an Early Modern Prodigy House
The Cecils at Theobalds, 1564- 1607
James M. Sutton(Author)
Ashgate Publishing Limited
Published on 20. December 2004
Book
Hardback
222 pages
978-0-7546-3235-1 (ISBN)
Description
A single significant Jacobean country house, Theobalds, provides the focus for this study. James Sutton here delves into the cultural and political aspirations of the two men most closely associated with Theobalds: William Cecil, Lord Burghley (1520-1598), who constructed the building, and his second-born son and political scion, Robert, 1st Earl of Salisbury (1563-1612). Attending to the opulent materials and hegemonic spatial codes that enabled Theobalds' fabrication, this book also demonstrates the enormous costs - economic, political, social, but especially familial and personal - of "building to envious show" in the period. Neither celebrating nor castigating the Cecils' conspicuous consumption at their Hertfordshire estate, the author offers a balanced appraisal of the aesthetic strategies through which they promulgated a family narrative. The forms of display he emphasizes are those in which Theobalds was particularly strong: architecture, gardening, the decorative arts, and above all, the occasional drama. Through its detailed rhetorical analysis of one house and one family, this book provides a fresh view of the complex passage from Elizabethan to Jacobean style.
Joining the ongoing scholarly conversation about the period's cultural poetics, Materializing Space at an Early Modern Prodigy House deepens our understanding of how early modern English men and women chose to be represented, both to themselves and to others.
Joining the ongoing scholarly conversation about the period's cultural poetics, Materializing Space at an Early Modern Prodigy House deepens our understanding of how early modern English men and women chose to be represented, both to themselves and to others.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Illustrations
12ill.
Dimensions
Height: 219 mm
Width: 153 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-7546-3235-1 (9780754632351)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
James M. Sutton is Associate Professor of English at Florida International University, USA.
Content
A local habitation and a name; Material Theobalds, circa 1590; Staging Theobalds: legitimization, retirement and debut; Theobalds at the threshold: between two reigns; Dispossessing Theobalds; Bibliography; Index.