Anti-Spanish sentiment in English literary and political writing 1553-1603

Abstract

This thesis examines anti-Spanish sentiment within Marian and Elizabethan literary and political writing. Although its primary aim is to reinvigorate the reader's perceptions about a topic that has traditionally been subject to considerable scholarly neglect, four `core' objectives can still be identified (a) to demonstrate how `anti-Spanishness' began as a deliberate, highly systematic attempt to tackle a number of unresolved issues within the minds of English Protestants through the dissemination of a key set of exegetical and eschatological myths (b) to show how these same myths were subsequently reinforced, both in the Marian and Elizabethan periods, by the extreme binary ideology that lay at the heart of early reformist thought itself (c) to redefine the ideological development of English textual hispanophobia within the early modem period and reveal how the triggers which catalysed it into birth, although dormant for a few years after Mary's death, never quite faded during its subsequent politico-literary mutations during Elizabeth's reign and (d) to propose and at the same time demonstrate that, even though English hispanophobia reached an unprecedented climax during Elizabeth's time in power both in terms of popular hatred for the Spaniard and number of anti-Spanish texts published, Elizabethan anti-Hispanism can still be viewed as one and the same thing as its Marian precursor -a purposeful and highly planned attempt to reinforce English religious and national identity in the face of a threatening, yet reluctantly respected Spain