[Dissertation] Cultivating Heraldic Histories in Early Modern English Literature

Description

“Cultivating Heraldic Histories” argues that early modern English heraldry generated vibrant historiographic debates within and across multiple institutions and communities. Though sixteenth-century elites insisted that heraldic privilege was limited to the inherently noble, heraldry remained a flexible social sign system that represented the histories and contemporary identities of people across the social spectrum. By focusing on what I call heraldry’s "social life,” my project creates a rich picture of heraldry’s place in early modern prose and drama, and adds nuance to several sweeping narratives of prior literary and historical scholarship. Rather than treating coats of arms as medieval nostalgia and heraldic texts as historical background, this study reads textual, visual, and oral heraldic discourses as literary in their own right, suggesting they functioned as catalysts—not just symptoms—of social mobility in early modern English culture. The first chapter argues that the volatile atmosphere in and around the College of Arms during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries gave rise to a unique body of heraldic writing by heralds and amateur writers. Although these books purported to decode heraldry’s relationship to English honor, they instead complicated the already labyrinthine discourses surrounding it. The second chapter uses archival sources to analyze an assortment of unofficial responses to printed heraldic texts. While heraldry officials published censures of each other’s work in print and manuscript, readers cross-referenced histories, disparaged court figures, and wrote mock-heraldic poetry satirizing their neighbors. Chapter three identifies the professional and economic relationships that linked heraldic performances at court to those in the popular theater. Populuxe dramas written by Kyd, Wilson, Middleton, and Shakespeare highlight the transactions underlying heraldic creation and display without undermining the system itself. The final chapter differentiates between English and Welsh historiographic modes in The Valiant Welshman, Shakespeare’s second tetralogy of history plays, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Although Shakespeare’s plays acknowledge the importance of heraldry in English history, they depict the Welsh as creators of an inclusive British historiography founded on a multiplicity of narratives.