Dr. Andrea Nichols | University of Nebraska Lincoln (original) (raw)

Publications by Dr. Andrea Nichols

Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Political Agency, Myth-Making, and Patronage, 2018

Largely except for Arthurian romance and Boudicca, much of what early modern Englishmen read and ... more Largely except for Arthurian romance and Boudicca, much of what early modern Englishmen read and understood as explanations for their national origins has long since faded from popular knowledge. Moreover, even royal women, those at the top of the social-political hierarchy, have been forgotten, even though they had exciting stories and long-term cultural impact. Indeed, Albine and her thirty-two sisters, the daughters of King Dioclesian, and Gwendolyn, Cornish wife of King Locrine, while mythological foreign invaders of England, have had substantial impacts in British culture and history. This chapter examines their medieval roots and cultural significance, particularly through the lens of early modern reader response and historical context, showing why audiences turned away in the seventeenth century, forgetting this complex past.

Literary Cultures and the Child, VOL. I: Medieval/Early Modern Literature and the Child, 2018

When considering the Tudor dynasty and how it was depicted in sixteenth and early seventeenth-cen... more When considering the Tudor dynasty and how it was depicted in sixteenth and early seventeenth-century chronicles, one the most compelling issues is that of succession. This chapter considers the importance of the pregnancies, births of heirs to the throne and other royal children, and the difference in depiction between male and female heirs as is seen in English histories printed during or shortly after the Tudor era. The focus of the chapter will be on the Tudor dynasty, starting with the seven children of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York; continuing with the pregnancies, miscarriages, and childhoods of the heirs born by the first three wives of Henry VIII; and ending with the two phantom pregnancies of Mary Tudor. There is an examination of the narratives of the children in a number of chronicles, including Holinshed’s Chronicles and Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, and works by Edward Hall, John Stow, Richard Grafton, William Martyn, Richard Baker, Polydore Vergil, and Giovanni Biondi. The chapter especially highlights the political, religious, and gender issues that intertwined with the topic of producing a healthy royal heir. Moreover, this chapter illuminates how various authors handled the complicated task of relating such a sensitive issues as pregnancy, miscarriage, stillbirth, the death of an heir, and the significance of the gender of a royal child.

A Biographical Encyclopedia of Early Modern Englishwomen, Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts, 1500-1650, eds. Carole Levin, Michele Osherow, and Anna Riehl, Nov 15, 2016

“Anne Basset.” “Margaret Gamage Howard.” “Elizabeth Jerningham.” “Joan Cosan.” “Margaret Davy.” ... more “Anne Basset.” “Margaret Gamage Howard.” “Elizabeth Jerningham.” “Joan Cosan.” “Margaret Davy.” “Katherine Basset.” “Mary Basset.” “Margaret Bourchier.” “Elizabeth Bryan Carew.” “Elizabeth Hussey Hungerford.” “Honor Plantagenet.” “Briget More.” “Mary Scrope.” “Anne Sapcote Broughton Jerningham Russell.” “Jane Fyneux Roper.” “Mary Norris Carew Champernowne.”

co-authored with Kathleen Kokensparger and Yiheng Song.

Scholars and Poets Talk about Queens, ed. Carole Levin and Christine Stewart-Nuñez, Aug 2015

Representations of Cleopatra and Elizabeth have shifted frequently over the centuries—starting wi... more Representations of Cleopatra and Elizabeth have shifted frequently over the centuries—starting with their own efforts and continuing with postmortem reinterpretations. Familiarity with Roman history, and its propagandist links to the Tudor dynasty, no doubt helped England easily see Cleopatra as a critique of contemporary worries about Elizabeth. However, comparison of the queens has been sparse, particularly when using early modern English dramatic sources. A cultural and representational analysis of Cleopatra over time in early modern English plays will show Elizabeth recurred throughout as well, and as a result, the Egyptian queen evolved into a culturally recognized symbol of monarchial critique.

Newberry Graduate Student Conference, 2014 Proceedings, Jun 2014

The Facts on File Encyclopedia of the Caribbean, ed. John D. Garrigus

Conference Presentations by Dr. Andrea Nichols

In the panel “Interpreting Sovereignty: Views of Queenship in early modern England," organized by... more In the panel “Interpreting Sovereignty: Views of Queenship in early modern England," organized by Andrea Nichols, co-sponsored by UNT

Given the extensive number of works and availability of texts that reveal traces of reader notes ... more Given the extensive number of works and availability of texts that reveal traces of reader notes on queens, this research moves beyond a case study of one particular title or a limited historical period, to a more encompassing and widely useful interdisciplinary study. I have examined over a hundred printed histories of England spanning the beginning of English printing in 1480 to the death of Charles I in 1649, further supported by commonplace books, letters, and manuscript histories. The results have shown that the women most likely to be noted by readers are royal, and particularly queens. In this paper, the lives of the queens most frequently noted by readers will be analyzed: Matilda, Holy Roman Empress and ‘Lady of the English’; Isabelle of France, the wife of Edward II; Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, and Elizabeth Tudor. I will investigate such questions as what readers focused on in these women’s lives, how that compares to lesser noted queens, and which depictions of English history attracted the most readers. The sources used include The Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, the Chronicles of England, Fabyan’s Chronicle, The Chronicle of the Kings of England; and the works of John Stow, Polydore Vergil, and Richard Grafton. In conclusion, this avenue of research opens a door to see how contemporary readers viewed their history, and how their views can alter our own perception of the past.

Through an examination of marginalia, this paper will highlight readers’ interest in a variety of... more Through an examination of marginalia, this paper will highlight readers’ interest in a variety of mythological, medieval, and early modern queens in England, including Queens Elizabeth I, Mary Tudor, Queen Emma of Normandy, Empress Matilda, and Queen Isabelle of France, the wife of Edward II. By focusing on what early modern readers were writing in these histories, it expands earlier scholarly efforts that focus upon only one of these histories, on one author’s set of works, or on queenship from other perspectives and sources. The paper will cover a variety of manuscript and print histories including the late medieval manus cript Brut Chronicle, William Caxton’s Chronicles of England (1480s), John Hardyng’s Chronicle (1543), Edward Hall’s Chronicle (1550), Cooper’s Chronicle (1565), Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577, 1587), and several of John Stow’s works from the sixteenth and early seventeenth century.

In early modern times, women and monsters were on the margins of the natural order, deemed less t... more In early modern times, women and monsters were on the margins of the natural order, deemed less than human and subordinate in all things to men—the perfect specimen, and head of state and household. Queenship, already a dangerous mix of political power with a woman’s natural roles as wife and mother, became even more troubling with the early modern phenomenon of queens regnant on several thrones across Europe, including three in the British Isles: Queen Mary I (r. 1553-58) and Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603) in England, and their cousin Queen Mary of Scotland (r. 1542-67). A queen ruling in her own right had committed a monstrous usurpation of a sphere that rightly belonged to men, a dreadful aberration that sent some, like the Scottish reformer John Knox, into paroxysms of anger and outrage. Coinciding with the phenomenon of queens regnant was a noticeable rise in concern about strange portents and monsters, evidenced in the many printings and images about them. Moreover, women and the monstrous were interrelated due to premodern biological understandings.

In my paper, I will be examining how simultaneously women and the monstrous were on the margins, yet a central, interrelated element in the narratives and imagery of early modern English print, particularly chronicles. How was a national chronicle narrative—along with other narratives increasingly spread by print—constructing and influencing a response to these phenomena? Were these three queens more or less monstrous in chronicles than in other writings? Why or why not?

The preface to the reader in The Chronicle of John Hardyng (1543) states that “None haue behynde ... more The preface to the reader in The Chronicle of John Hardyng (1543) states that “None haue behynde theim, left so greate treasure…As thei whiche haue taken peines to write Chronicles and actes” so that “By Chronicles we knowe, in eche countree / What menne have been” since “Chronicles dooe recorde and testifie…dooe kepe in continuall memorie…that Englishe men might haue understanding / Of all affaires, touchyng their owne countree.” While this refers to chronicles as created in manuscript form by “thei which haue taken peines to write”—which Hardyng’s chronicle originally was—this particular work was printed in London in the sixteenth century. However, there are many medieval manuscript chronicles, with some of the more famous and long-lasting English examples being the Chronicles of London, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, the Croyland Chronicle, Jean Froissart’s Chronicle, Thomas Walsingham’s Historia Anglicana, the St. Alban’s Chronicle, The Chronicle of John Hardyng, and The Brut chronicle. Quite a few of these and other late medieval manuscript chronicles were continued into the print era by later chroniclers and printers such as William Caxton, Richard Grafton, and John Stow who saw the genre’s popularity as a worthwhile investment. For my paper, I will draw upon the The Brut manuscript chronicle printed later as The Chronicles of England by William Caxton, Fabyan’s New Chronicles of England and France (a manuscript printed posthumously), The Chronicle of John Hardyng later continued by Richard Grafton, the Thomas Lanquet and Thomas Cooper hybrid known as Cooper’s Chronicle, Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland; and John Stow’s Annales, Summarie, and Chronicles.

My research will examine the intertextuality of the chronicles, particularly the influences and dynamism between chronicles first circulated in manuscript and later in print. First, a largely neglected element of chronicles is the paratextual elements, particularly the development of headings, regnal and chronological year markings, page numbers, and marginal annotations. All of these elements can be found in both the manuscript and print versions of chronicles, yet, they were initially employed irregularly in both manuscript and print. Who pioneered the format regularly employed by printed chronicles in the mid to late sixteenth century? My research will show how not only did scribes’ and printers’ preferences play a part, but also the readers’ desires, evidenced by the markings they made.

Lastly, manuscript and print continued to coexist with lengthy annotations, manuscript documents, and other drawings written or pasted into chronicles, showing owners’ engagement with the text. Moreover, while the cultural importance and popularity of chronicles can be further illustrated given Shakespeare’s use and the sheer number and editions of chronicles printed in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, chronicles’ place in Englishman’s “continuall memorie” is more thoroughly illustrated by the multiple generations of Englishmen who engaged with both manuscript and print versions of these texts, sometimes simultaneously. Indeed, it would appear readers had a significant part in developing the chronicle format and focus through their annotations. Furthermore, they used the works to better understand current crises and investigate their cultural roots, fulfilling Hardyng’s desire that “Englishe men might haue understanding / Of all affaires, touchyng their owne countree.”

Little is known about François Desprez’s creation of one hundred and twenty woodcuts for Les Song... more Little is known about François Desprez’s creation of one hundred and twenty woodcuts for Les Songes Drolatiques de Pantraguel (The Humorous Dreams of Pantagruel) published in Paris in 1565 by Richard Breton, who claimed it was the work of François Rabelais. While Les Songes did draw upon Rabelais’ four writings about the giant Gargantua, his son Pantagruel, and their friend Panurge, Rabelais had died in 1553, so he was not the true author of Les Songes. With closer inspection, the book’s gallery of fantastic creatures also appeared to be strongly influenced by the artists Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. What was the context, influence, and motivation for creating this book of woodcuts, with no accompanying text except for a preface, more than a decade after the death of Rabelais?

The often-overlooked woodcuts from Les Songes have an important position as examples of appropriation and transmission of popular topics during the print revolution era. Many textual works were quoted with impunity, given the Renaissance method of learning by copying not curtailed by the modern sense of plagiarism, and early print culture’s lack of copyright. However, printers and artists chose material that would sell, making it possible to trace images and themes that were being transmitted and reused throughout Europe because of their resonance with a large audience.

Indeed, the common topic from Bosch to Rabelais was a popular culture interest in monstrous creatures and marvelous events that peaked in the sixteenth-century. Furthermore, Rabelais’ writings were famous for their satirical portrayal of human folly and desires, along with discussion of social concerns like the growing violence across Europe from religious wars and the discovery of new lands and peoples. In addition, his work sold very well—a possible reason why Les Songes’ lack of text was not a problem, given audience familiarity with the stories—yet had originally been printed with very few or no images. Much of Bosch and Bruegel’s work also addressed the human condition, despite modern initial observations seeing only chaos and a surreal depiction of seemingly random hybrids of objects and animals. Monsters fit well with these aims, as grotesques and hybrids too provided symbolic meaning and commentary on human society.

This paper, through the examination of a particular Les Songes woodcut of a walking fish, will show how Desprez’s translation of Rabelais’ satiric portrayals into woodcuts drew upon established work, such as Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The aim was to create a commercially viable set of character illustrations with symbolism easily recognizable to a European audience fascinated with monsters. In addition, the analysis will address why were so many walking fish among a multitude of grotesques and caricatures, and what the iconography of a walking fish would mean.

Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Political Agency, Myth-Making, and Patronage, 2018

Literary Cultures and the Child, VOL. I: Medieval/Early Modern Literature and the Child, 2018

A Biographical Encyclopedia of Early Modern Englishwomen, Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts, 1500-1650, eds. Carole Levin, Michele Osherow, and Anna Riehl, Nov 15, 2016

co-authored with Kathleen Kokensparger and Yiheng Song.

Scholars and Poets Talk about Queens, ed. Carole Levin and Christine Stewart-Nuñez, Aug 2015

Newberry Graduate Student Conference, 2014 Proceedings, Jun 2014

The Facts on File Encyclopedia of the Caribbean, ed. John D. Garrigus

The English Tudor dynasty provides many examples for the study of contemporary cultural, social, ... more The English Tudor dynasty provides many examples for the study of contemporary cultural, social, and political lenses through which a queen’s roles as wife, mother, and political ally were viewed. A queen’s body raised great anxiety when the mysteries of reproduction and fear of female sexuality overlapped with the body politic in her role as a transmitter of royal blood and inheritance. Moreover, this anxiety increased when the early modern phenomenon of queens regnant placed several females on thrones across Europe, since, according to the one-sex model, women were imperfect men. Therefore, a female ruler was such an aberration that some like the Scottish reformer John Knox called it a monstrous usurpation of a sphere that rightly belonged to men.

This paper will examine the issues of queenship, female sexuality, and the sixteenth-century fascination with the monstrous through the specific aspects of birth and inheritance, given the context of the Tudor monarchs’ need to legitimize their claim and continue the bloodline, while they simultaneously worked to weave the fragmented realm into a cohesive nation. What was more important, the royal blood of a rightful ruler, or giving birth to an heir? How did a queen regnant complicate matters? Clearly, Tudor queens’ bodies are crucial in this narrative, not only for continuing the dynastic line, but also for preventing the destruction of the body politic through another civil war. Some of the key sources for viewing how the nascent English nation saw their queens are the newly printed English chronicles, which in the sixteenth-century, as argued by James Knapp and Barrett L. Beer, begin to change into a national history, and plays performed throughout the country. The results will show the complex interaction of monstrosity—both political and biological—gender, and power.

Representations of Cleopatra and Elizabeth have shifted frequently over the centuries—starting wi... more Representations of Cleopatra and Elizabeth have shifted frequently over the centuries—starting with their own efforts and continuing with postmortem reinterpretations. Familiarity with Roman history, and its propagandist links to the Tudor dynasty, no doubt helped England easily see Cleopatra as a critique of contemporary worries about Elizabeth. However, comparison of the queens has been sparse, particularly when using early modern English dramatic sources, often overshadowed by Shakespeare. Merging these avenues of research into a cultural and representational analysis of early modern Cleopatra plays showed Elizabeth’s recurrence throughout and the Egyptian queen’s evolution into a culturally recognized symbol of monarchial critique.

A public talk about various popularly held ideas about Copernicus and his heliocentric theory....... more A public talk about various popularly held ideas about Copernicus and his heliocentric theory....separating fact from fiction.

A public talk examining hidden places, like the Chapel Hill, NC and Morehead Planetarium's connec... more A public talk examining hidden places, like the Chapel Hill, NC and Morehead Planetarium's connection to the Race to the Moon in the 1950s-1960s; in addition, I looked at other hidden figures, like the Mercury 13 female astronauts who never made it to space.

Presentation (Nov 1) for History 391, section 2, taught by Dr. Jodi Bilinkoff at the University o... more Presentation (Nov 1) for History 391, section 2, taught by Dr. Jodi Bilinkoff at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I spoke on how information, media depiction, and representation change with the format, and how format impacts the information and its representation. Manuscripts, early print, the digital era, digitization, and born-digital humanities projects were all discussed.

I was also there with Dr. Kelly Stage

"brown bag lunch" presentation of my dissertation while doing archival research at Columbia Unive... more "brown bag lunch" presentation of my dissertation while doing archival research at Columbia University Libraries.

[opening paragraph] We are here tonight to celebrate the 600th anniversary of Joan of Arc’s birt... more [opening paragraph]
We are here tonight to celebrate the 600th anniversary of Joan of Arc’s birth, however even this ‘fact’ is not absolute but rather a reliance on popular memory. The day of Joan’s birth was not officially recorded in Domrémy, but the people of her town remembered that she was born on Epiphany, or Twelfth-night, which is January 6. There are few aspects of Joan’s life that are recorded for posterity, furthermore she was active on the stage of history for only a brief time, 1429-31. However, in the 6 centuries since she has lived, over 12,000 books and a host of images have been produced (particularly in the last 200 years, when in 1841, Jules Michelet published his seminal work Historie de France. ), but I will be exploring a specific form of popular memory, 15th and 16th century chronicle writings.

Building from the recent micro and macro-studies of texts, genres, and readers in literary critic... more Building from the recent micro and macro-studies of texts, genres, and readers in literary criticism, history of the book and print culture, and queenship studies, this study maps how early modern English histories printed between 1480-1661 were (re)created and read. Textual analysis and cultural context are used to illuminate the themes and impacts on the narrative and readers found in a corpus of 153 printed English histories and over a dozen commonplace books filled with early modern readers’ notes.

Chapters 1-3 delve into reading, owning, and availability of English histories, along with likely audience, evidence of reader usage in markings and commonplace books, and author methodologies in crafting the narratives. Building upon that foundation, Chapters 4-5 focus on narrative change over time and reader interaction with passages discussing queens regnant Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, who ruled England from 1553-1603, during which many English histories were created or expanded. The narrative nuances are significant given the religious and political differences between Catholic Mary and Elizabeth, who re-established Anglican Protestantism. Chapter 6 narrows the focus down to one reader, a late eighteenth-century man named Adnett Garrett, and his response to Sir Richard Baker’s Chronicle of the Kings of England (London, 1653), formed largely from earlier sixteenth-century histories. Garrett’s commentary illuminates the longevity of early modern English histories and the impact of popular culture on historical interpretation.

This study merges the fields of English history, marginalia, and queenship to answer long-standing questions, such as readers’ range of usage and interpretation of the texts, which titles readers annotated the most, common versus exceptional annotation habits, and the importance of queens in historical narratives. This research also provides context for a genre often mined without context for quotes or ignored as significant by queenship studies, opening up avenues of further cross-disciplinary pollination. Together, this dissertation proves the pervasiveness, popularity, and importance of English history in politics and culture.