The
European Conference on Arts & Humanities 2015, Brighton, United Kingdom
Official Conference Proceedings

The
European Conference on Arts & Humanities 2015, Brighton, United Kingdom
Official Conference Proceedings

The
European Conference on Arts & Humanities 2015, Brighton, United Kingdom
Official Conference Proceedings

This essay examines the ways in which Henry used poetics and performances to
establish the iconography of his court and the relevance, within this context, of
Henry’s specific choice of Katherine as queen to preside over his chivalric court.
Though analysis may now often interrogate the possibility of underlying insecurities
motivating Henry’s actions, the king’s consciousness of his own power and belief in
his own ultimate sovereignty are equally important elements of almost every such
analysis. However, the court over which a not-yet-eighteen year old Henry ascended
in 1509 was a very different animal. Henry may have already begun to conceive of his
sovereignty as unimpeachable, but he was a fair distance from being able to enforce
that conception. How he handled the problems arising from this gap between desire
and action determined many of the more defining elements of his reign, for in these
first moments Henry intentionally created, in contrast to his father, and through verse
and performance, a court invested in the ideals of courtly love, chose as the subject
center for that court the regal Katherine, and began the drive towards absolute
monarchy in its most ambitious sense that would make everything that followed
possible. In the decisions he made in transitioning the court from his father’s to his
own and in establishing his own royal identity, Henry VIII created, by example, the
definitions of masculinity, courtiership, and chivalric behavior which he expected to
be followed in his court and to define his court in history.
Keywords: Henry VIII, courtly love poetry, Henrician poetry

Rebecca M. Moore