Chapter 3. From ornament to armament
The epistolary rhetoric of Lady Elizabeth Tudor
Queen Elizabeth I is recognised as a monarch for whom language was an
essential tool in the construction of her authority and the maintenance of her
rule. This can be seen directly through her state communication e.g. parliamentary
speeches, or more indirectly in her activities in literary translation and
poetry undertaken throughout her life and reign. This paper explores two early
examples of her epistolary writing – a letter to her stepmother, Queen Katherine
Parr (1544) and a later epistle (written in 1554) to her sister, Mary I – to explore
how the pre-accessional Elizabeth developed these skills in rhetoric and literary
style. It combines a literary stylistic approach with Renaissance rhetorical
concepts to describe and evaluate how the epistolary language achieves identity
and inter-personal work, and how this can be seen to inform Elizabeth’s later
epistolary practices as queen.
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