:The Fear of Hell: Images of Damnation and Salvation in Early Modern Europe

Abstract

Ian Atherton and Julie Sanders (eds), The 1630s: Interdisciplinary Essays on Culture and Politics in the Caroline Era, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2006, pp. 218, hb. £55, ISBN: 07190-71585Atherton and Sanders have brought together ten essays (including their introduction), on a broad perspective of the 1630s. They suggest that the decade is worthy of singular study by proposing that many of our images of the decade are airy chimera blown away by a breath of investigative wind. The decade of peace: shattered by the contentious government, or by the clatter of arms in the hands of drilling militia; the period of extra-parliamentary rule: meaningless in Ireland or Scotland where parliaments met in the decade. And they are right to do so. This is a battleground not only for the embattled puritans or the bastions of social peace and order, but for historians and other scholars drawn to the last years of pre-revolutionary England.Malcolm Smuts looks at the challenges facing Charles I's government and how it was perceived and sees much to connect the aims of the soon-to-be royalists and parliamentarians: differences centred on approach not aims. John Peacock looks at Charles I's image: how he was portrayed in art, drama and against the backdrop of architecture as a roman emperor. Specific emperors were being regarded as being archetypal good monarchs and Charles during the 30s was being compared to them in masques as well as in the art of Van Dyke. Sarah Poynting is more personal in her approach, looking at the king's correspondence with a close coterie. It was to prove a dangerous liaison: of all his close correspondents only one survived into the 1660s, the rest were dead, some having been executed from 1641 onwards by the king's enemies. Perhaps this is not surprising, as Poynting shows this correspondence was central to extra-parliamentary government and shaped policy and practice. The essay thus provides a useful examination of the mechanics of the king's reign in the 30s. Caroline Hibbard looks at the queen and explores her role: something which is subject to extensive reappraisal in other arenas too at present. The essay is broader than the title suggests as the exploration is as much about Henrietta Maria's court in the 30s and the multifaceted relations within the wider court in general. It is, like the foregoing essay, a very useful study of dynamics.James Knowles and Karen Britland look at drama during the period; the former at orientalism in masques and the latter at Thomas May's Antigone. …