| This dissertation is a study of the relation between art and power during the reign of Charles II (1660--1685). It examines the use of ceremony, spectacle and other modes of royal display to assert political power and to shape national memory of both the recent and ancient past. This work looks at public celebrations like his restoration, coronation and marriage as well as courtly modes of display, including naval and imperial Imagery, and Restoration and ancient British motifs.; The overall purpose is to illuminate Charles II's shifting strategies of representation to see how he relied on them to project varying images of kingship and to communicate civic and religious values to his subjects. The dissertation will explore the extent to which these strategies enabled him to devise a cultural frame to remake majesty and, at the same time, the extent to which his problematic portrayal undermined that framework and mocked the very claims of sovereign power that he asserted.; This study strives to be interdisciplinary and comprehensive. It draws from the perspectives of anthropology, art history and literature. It examines a broad array of evidence, including archival records, sermons, diaries, poetry, drama, prints, paintings, architecture, landscaping, tapestries, decorative objects, medals, and musical lyrics. The use of both European and English sources places royal Imagery from the English Restoration into a larger early modern European context.; This work seeks to illuminate several key questions: What sorts of messages did these royal Images convey and to what extent did they both reflect and shape the political and cultural concerns of the period? Do ritual and spectacle reveal a particular sensibility that goes to the heart of how people understood their world? Finally, did early modern celebratory display give physical representation to mythic ideals or idealize the realities of power politics?... |
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