Writing Under Tyranny: English Literature and the Henrician Reformation spans the boundaries between literary studies and history. It looks at the impact of tyrannical government on the work of poets, playwrights, and prose writers of the early English Renaissance. It shows the profound effects that political oppression had on the literary production of the years from 1528 to 1547, and how English writers in turn strove to mitigate, redirect, and finally resist that oppression. The result was the destruction of a number of forms that had dominated the literary production of late-medieval England, but also the creation of new forms that were to dominate the writing of the following centuries. Paradoxically, the tyranny of Henry VIII gave birth to many modes of writing now seen to be characteristic of the English literary Renaissance.
1. The Long Divorce of Steel: Tyranny and Political Culture in Henry VIII's England ; POETRY AND THE CULTURE OF COUNSEL: THE 1532 IWORKES OF GEFFRAY CHAUCER/I AND JOHN HEYWOOD'S IPLAY OF THE WETHER/I ; 2. A Gift for Henry VIII ; 3. The Signs of the World: The 'Wondrous' Divisions of the early 1530s ; 4. Reading Chaucer in 1532 ; 5. Thynne and Tuke's Apocrypha ; 6. Mocking the Thunder: Henry VIII, Jupiter, and John Heywood's iPlay of the Wether/i ; 'TO VIRTUE PERSUADED'?: THE PERSISTENT COUNSELS OF SIR THOMAS ELYOT ; 7. Sir Thomas Elyot and the King's Great Matter ; 8. iThe Boke Named the Governor/i: Good Kingship and the Royal Supremacy ; 9. Tyranny and the Conscience of Man: Elyot's Dialogues, 1533-34 ; 10. From Supremacy to Tyranny ; 11. The Apotheosis of Sir Thomas Elyot ; THE DEATH OF COUNSEL: SIR THOMAS WYATT AND HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY ; 12. Sir Thomas Wyatt: Poetry and Politics ; 13. Tyranny Condemned: Wyatt's Epistolary Satires ; 14. Wyatt's Embassy, Treason, and 'The Defence' ; 15. Pleading With Power: Wyatt's Penitential Psalms ; 16. 'Wyatt Resteth Here': Henry Howard and the Invention of Resistance ; 17. Writing under Tyranny: Wyatt, Surrey, and the Reinvention of English Poetry
