Description
Book SynopsisThe cultural highlights of the reign of Queen Anne (1702-1714) have long been overlooked. However, recent scholarship, including the present volume, is demonstrating that Anne has been seriously underestimated, both as a person, and as a monarch, and that there was much cultural activity of note in what might be called an interim period, coming after the deaths of Dryden and Purcell but before the blossoming of Pope and Handel, after the glories of Baroque architecture but before the triumph of Burlingtonian neoclassicism. The authors of Queen Anne and the Arts make a case for Anne’s reign as a time of experimentation and considerable accomplishment in new genres, some of which developed, some of which faded away. The volume includes essays on the music, drama, poetry, quasi-operas, political pamphlets, and architecture, as well as on newer genres, such as coin and medal collecting, hymns, and poetical miscellanies, all produced during Anne’s reign.
Trade ReviewMost scholars agree that Queen Anne had a remarkable, if not necessarily noteworthy, career . . . Anne's admirers (present as well as past) viewed her as confident, majestic, and impressive, whereas her detractors considered her fat, lazy, and sterile. The connections among gender, the body, and reputation could not be any more evident. Contributors to this collection generally adopt the former view. Reverand argues that, with regard to the arts, 'Anne has been seriously underestimated' and that the 'interim period' in which she ruled, the period before the advent of the Baroque, was characterized by a great deal of artistic experimentation. . . .[The essays] make intriguing forays into the ways in which the queen’s persona was adopted for political or ceremonial purposes; essays on Daniel Defoe (Nicholas Seager) and on musical odes (Estelle Murphy) are particularly interesting. . . .Summing Up: Recommended . . . Graduate students, researchers, faculty. * CHOICE *
What we can be grateful for here is having a much-needed reappraisal of the cultural activity that characterized the twilight years of Stuart rule. * New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century *
[An] informative collection. . . .Reverand has brought together fine essays on music, theater, visual art, architecture, poetry, and print culture. * SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 *
[An] excellent collection. * Eighteenth-Century Life *
The essayists are well qualified to assess the arts in the reign of Queen Anne and include EC-ASECS members as well as international scholars.... This collection of essays helps us see the constructs that Anne and her artistic community shared in the representation of the finest of British creativity to the world at large. * The Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1: “Praise the Patroness of Arts” James A. Winn Chapter 2: “She Will Not Be That Tyrant They Desire”: Daniel Defoe and Queen Anne Nicholas Seager Chapter 3: Queen Anne, Patron of Poets? Juan Christian Pellicer Chapter 4: The Moral in the Material: Numismatics and Identity in Evelyn, Addison, and Pope Barbara M. Benedict Chapter 5: Mild Mockery: Queen Anne’s Era and the Cacophony of Calm Kevin L. Cope Chapter 6: Great Anna’s Chaucer: Pope’s January and May and the Logic of Settlement Philip Smallwood Chapter 7: The Diverting Muse: Miscellanies and Miscellany Culture in Queen Anne’s Reign Abigail Williams Chapter 7: Nicholas Rowe’s The Fair Penitent and the Performance of Personal Space in Eighteenth-Century London Julia H. Fawcett Chapter 8: The Theater in the Age of Queen Anne: The Case of George Farquhar Brian Corman Chapter 9: Isaac Watts’s Occasional Conformities Jayne Lewis Chapter 10: Musical Politics in George Granville’s The British Enchanters Amanda Eubanks Winkler Chapter 11: “Sing Great Anna’s Matchless Name”: Images of Queen Anne in the Court Ode Estelle Murphy Chapter 12: Nicholas Hawksmoor: The Other English Baroque Architect Cedric D. Reverand II Bibliography Notes on Contributors
