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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Henry VIII's Divorce: Literature and the Politics of the Printing Press

Henry VIII's Divorce: Literature and the Politics of the Printing Press

Warner, J. Christopher

Hardcover

General World HistoryBritish History

ISBN10: 0851156428
ISBN13: 9780851156422
Publisher: Boydell Press
Published: Dec 17 1998
Pages: 174
Weight: 1.06
Height: 0.74 Width: 6.22 Depth: 9.48
Language: English
A close examination of the rivalry between two printing presses at the time of the divorce crisis shows how the new learning could be employed to influence even the king himself.

During the period of Henry VIII's divorce crisis, a political and literary rivalry developed between Thomas Berthelet, the king's printer, and the Rastell family, kinsmen of the Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More and quasi-official printers in their own right. This study recounts the text-by-text progress of the feud. It describes how Berthelet represented Henry as a prudent philosopher-king, taking the advice of scholars and theologians on anulling his marriage, and on limiting the Church's power (texts include A Glass of the Truth, rumoured to be by Henry himself, and the works of Sir Thomas Elyot). In response to the king's press campaign, the Rastells' dialogues and dramasstaged the kind of wise counsel that Henry ostensibly welcomed (John Rastell's A New Book of Purgatory, Skelton's Magnificenceamong them), observing the rules dictated by the king's public image and urging him towards greater conformity with that image than divorce or declaration of royal supremacy would allow.

J. CHRISTOPHER WARNER is Associate Professor of English at Le Moyne College.

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