The Catholic Imaginary and the Cults of Elizabeth I, 1558–1582 (review)

Stephen Hamrick explains that his objectives in this study are to demonstrate the influences of Catholic worldviews on English "shorter poetry" and to trace how different poets employed representations of Catholicism within the Petrarchan cults of Elizabeth during the first half of her reign. From this, it is evident that his study is a work of literary criticism that (as he readily admits) is deeply indebted to Louis Montrose. Like Montrose, Hamrick takes a historicist approach in re-situating Petrarchan literatures within their original religious and cultural contexts. Also like Montrose, Hamrick accepts the existence of cults of Elizabeth that, although unstable and potentially contradictory, were nonetheless part of the ideology operated by the political nation. The novelty of Hamrick's study is that he is looking at lesser-known texts of the early-Elizabethan period. At the same time, he is employing the theoretical apparatus of cultural-anthropologists to a much greater extent than do others.

Although Hamrick's interdisciplinary approach is laudable, it also creates some problems for readers who are historians. His use of literary or anthropological jargon sometimes obfuscates and often jars: to take one example, when discussing the impact of Elizabeth I's famous walk-out during the Christmas Mass of 1558, Hamrick concludes that "the cognitive dissonance created by her actions achieved much the same type of defamiliarization and symbolic or structural disaggregation characteristic of liminal rituals" (p. 24). Another problem is that in his hands, historical events sometimes take on meanings that were unlikely to have been understood or appreciated by contemporaries. When describing the same incident, he calls Elizabeth's action her appropriation of the Mass, in that she became "a kind of invisible presence which her subjects take into their thoughts for contemplation rather than contemplation of Christ in the Host" (p. 23). By talking about her behavior, Elizabeth's subjects were, moreover, metaphorically taking Elizabeth into their mouths as they would consume the sacrament (p. 230).

That being said, Hamrick's study is strong in the range of texts it discusses and for setting them within their political and religious contexts. In chapter 2, Hamrick brings out effectively the uncertainties of the early 1560s, when Catholic practices continued and the succession issue remained undecided, and puts up a good case that these concerns formed the background to a range of writings, but especially Barnabe Googe's Eclogues, Epitaphs, and Sonnets (1563). This miscellany he generally interprets as an ideological critique of Catholic practices, spectacles, and the Elizabethan cult at court, while the malevolent figure of Coridon, he argues, refers to Robert Dudley. In chapters 3 and 4 Hamrick turns to the 1570s and in particular the poet George Gascoigne. Gascoigne, explains Hamrick, stood out from the many Protestants who attacked Italianate, erotic literature in a courtly discourse that they perceived as Catholic in its values and sensibilities. By contrast, Gascoigne "re-engaged the cults of Elizabeth" (p. 84) and transferred traditional pieties "through the Catholic imaginary" to those cults (p. 86). This he did during a period of heightened anti-Catholicism induced by the Northern Rebellion, papal excommunication, and Ridolfi Plot. In chapter 5, Hamrick analyzes Thomas Watson's Latin sonnet sequence Passionate Century of Love (1582) and argues that the poet uses the Catholic imaginary to assert the possibility that Catholics could be loyal to the queen; to reject the Anjou marriage scheme; and to act as an apology for his patron, Edward de Vere, the earl of Oxford.

Hamrick persuasively argues that poetry and other texts allude to Catholic practices and values. Here, he builds well on recent historical and cultural studies that show the pervading influence of Catholic sensibilities within Elizabethan England. However, he is less persuasive in demonstrating the influence of the "Catholic imaginary" on representations of Elizabeth. His argument depends on a reading of texts that is sometimes controversial, as when he associates Elizabeth with Gascoigne's...