Embodying opposition: Early modern libel and the politics of personality

Abstract

Embodying Opposition: Early Modern Libel and the Politics of Personality presents a study of libelling in England during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that situates this practice within the literary and political cultures of the period. Literary and historical debates that have positioned libels on the margins of discussions about the relationship between literature and politics in this period are revaluated. Instead, it is argued that libels can be read as a central vehicle for articulating political discontent. As the thesis demonstrates, libels’ ad hominem mode of address challenged an early modern system of spiritual and secular governance in which authority was insi..