| This dissertation examines the uses of published political prophecy in Tudor-Stuart England, especially those that concerned the monarchy. It places political prophecies in the context of a more general European understanding that prophecy was simply history written in future tense. More importantly, the dissertation shows that political vaticination served as the theoretical foundation of much of English politics in the early modern period.;Defined as any prescient material that attempts to forecast the political future, political prophecies defy easy categorization. As a distinct genre, certain key texts were composed according to a particular format and recycled and reinterpreted time and again. As a distinct political discourse, these reinterpretations were usually transformed in some way in order to suit the needs of successive generations. Indeed, the fundamental relationship between prophecy and politics revolved around this instability.;This study is based largely on published material, although manuscript sources have been included where relevant. Over three hundred printed prophecies, drawn from the microfilm collections of the Thomason Tracts and the Early English Books and Newspapers, have survived. Material was also found in modern, published anthologies of medieval and early modern texts, the foreign and domestic state papers of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs, and journal and scholarly reprints of the texts of many political prophecies. |
