8 Truth, lies and fiction in sixteenth-century Protestant historiography
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Patrick Collinson
Abstract
John Foxe had a great deal to say on the subject of ‘truth’. But he was accused by his religious opponents of telling lies on an unprecedented scale. Like his friend and mentor, John Bale, he was a myth-maker. In approaching the question of truth, and of different orders or kinds of truth, as well as the distinctions to be made between truth and falsehood, fact and fiction, this chapter begins with Sir Philip Sidney's Apologie for Poetrie. According to Sidney, history claimed to stand for truth and the practical and ethical value of historical truth. The case as it concerns sixteenth-century literary and subliterary tastes and genres can be illustrated at random from the titles of relatively ephemeral products of the Elizabethan and early Stuart press, in which reports, however improbable and unreliable, were presented to the gullible reader as ‘true’ and fully attested.
Abstract
John Foxe had a great deal to say on the subject of ‘truth’. But he was accused by his religious opponents of telling lies on an unprecedented scale. Like his friend and mentor, John Bale, he was a myth-maker. In approaching the question of truth, and of different orders or kinds of truth, as well as the distinctions to be made between truth and falsehood, fact and fiction, this chapter begins with Sir Philip Sidney's Apologie for Poetrie. According to Sidney, history claimed to stand for truth and the practical and ethical value of historical truth. The case as it concerns sixteenth-century literary and subliterary tastes and genres can be illustrated at random from the titles of relatively ephemeral products of the Elizabethan and early Stuart press, in which reports, however improbable and unreliable, were presented to the gullible reader as ‘true’ and fully attested.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of abbreviations vi
- Acknowledgments vii
- Introduction 1
- 1 The politics of religion and the religion of politics in Elizabethan England 36
- 2 The Elizabethan exclusion crisis and the Elizabethan polity 61
- 3 Servants and citizens 98
- 4 Pulling the strings 122
- 5 Elizabeth I and the verdicts of history 143
- 6 Biblical rhetoric 167
- 7 John Foxe and national consciousness 193
- 8 Truth, lies and fiction in sixteenth-century Protestant historiography 216
- 9 One of us? 245
- 10 William Camden and the anti-myth of Elizabeth 270
- 11 John Stow and nostalgic antiquarianism 287
- Index 309
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of abbreviations vi
- Acknowledgments vii
- Introduction 1
- 1 The politics of religion and the religion of politics in Elizabethan England 36
- 2 The Elizabethan exclusion crisis and the Elizabethan polity 61
- 3 Servants and citizens 98
- 4 Pulling the strings 122
- 5 Elizabeth I and the verdicts of history 143
- 6 Biblical rhetoric 167
- 7 John Foxe and national consciousness 193
- 8 Truth, lies and fiction in sixteenth-century Protestant historiography 216
- 9 One of us? 245
- 10 William Camden and the anti-myth of Elizabeth 270
- 11 John Stow and nostalgic antiquarianism 287
- Index 309
