Henry VIII's Divorce: Literature and the Politics of the Printing Press
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A01=J Christopher Warner
Author_J Christopher Warner
Category=DSB
Category=JPV
Category=NHDJ
divorce crisis
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Henry VIII
print
printing presses
public spectacle
Rastell family
royal authority
scholars
theologians
Thomas Berthelet
Product details
- ISBN 9780851156422
- Weight: 406g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 17 Dec 1998
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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A close examination of the rivalry between two printing presses at the time of the divorce crisis shows how the new learning could be employed to influence even the king himself.
During the period of Henry VIII's divorce crisis, a political and literary rivalry developed between Thomas Berthelet, the king's printer, and the Rastell family, kinsmen of the Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More and quasi-official printers in their own right. This study recounts the text-by-text progress of the feud. It describes how Berthelet represented Henry as a prudent philosopher-king, taking the advice of scholars and theologians on anulling his marriage, and on limiting the Church's power (texts include A Glass of the Truth, rumoured to be by Henry himself, and the works of Sir Thomas Elyot). In response to the king's press campaign, the Rastells' dialogues and dramasstaged the kind of wise counsel that Henry ostensibly welcomed (John Rastell's A New Book of Purgatory, Skelton's Magnificenceamong them), observing the rules dictated by the king's public image and urging him towards greater conformity with that image than divorce or declaration of royal supremacy would allow.
J. CHRISTOPHER WARNER is Associate Professor of English at Le Moyne College.
