Making History: The Rhetorical and Historical Occasion of Elizabeth Tudorís Coronation Entry

The problem of historiography is, above all else, a problem of the relationship between events and texts. ¹ The notion of the factuality of history is predicated on the erasure of this relationship, or on the simplification of the multiple valences of events to their representation in accounts and their traces in various forms of records. However, events themselves differ for different viewers and participants, to such an extent that there can be no privileged viewpoint except one artificially produced through textual representation. Events deemed worthy of recording are defined not only by the incidents they comprise, but also by the kind of rhetorical occasion they present--and the rhetorical occasion includes not only the event but also the writer, the writer's purpose and intentions, and the writer's audience. ² The audience for a text, while not as diverse as the audience for an event (in that a text's audience tends to be limited to the literate), cannot be simplified into a group to whom the writer makes specific, identifiable appeals. Audiences are shaped by texts, but their experiences, positioning, and interpretive practices also shape texts in ways that writers cannot anticipate and control, as events themselves are divergently shaped by their audiences. This essay investigates the interactions of these processes.

This multilevel diversity of interpretive response renders accounts of historical events useful not only for what they reveal about a specific event, but for what they reveal about, and how they interact with, the complex social context of the production and reception of such an event. The relationship between events and texts can usefully be examined as a rhetorical structure, not simply in terms of the rhetorical forms of texts and events, but in terms of the entire rhetorical occasion. Such an "occasion" includes the interests of individuals within social groups, and of specific groups with relation to the larger sociopolitical scene, as that scene was conceived and, to some extent, constructed. Accounts resonate with these social interests and values--the ethics--of their writers, and they participate in the reinforcement, refinement, or reconfiguration of such values and interests within their sociohistorical moment. Additionally--and to some extent unintentionally--accounts of events participate in the construction of perceptions about their historical context for future readers and writers. ³ Attention to the rhetoricity of a range of texts about a single event allows some of the possibilities for cultural construction and ethical disjunction to surface, revealing the complexity of the historical moment, and calling into question perceptions of cultural unity and interpretive stability.

This essay will focus on the event and texts of the coronation entry of Elizabeth I. The coronation entry was a traditional, ritual procession of the monarch and court through the streets of London, beginning at the Tower of London and ending at Westminster, moving along a fixed route through several sites of significance to the city. In Elizabeth Tudor's entry procession, these sites were decorated with tableaux, or with some form of allegorical or genealogical structure--a tradition which developed gradually throughout the Tudor period, growing increasingly complex and interactive over time. In this instance the new queen is reported to have stopped repeatedly along the route to hear and respond to speeches and poetic recitations, and to receive gifts, advice, and praise. Guild members dressed in their livery lined the richly decorated streets, and the rest of the citizenry watched from windows, doorways, and on the streets from behind barricades. Most of the cost of the event was born by the city.

The contemporaneous accounts of Elizabeth Tudor's 1558/59 coronation entry

Comparing three contemporaneous accounts of Elizabeth Tudor's coronation entry by focusing on their representations of the tableau and interactions at Cheapside, one stop along the procession route, reveals disjunctions which suggest...