View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarWorks@UARK University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 12-2011 The undeTh ring Throne: Personality, Poetics, and Gender in the Court of King Henry VIII Rebecca Marie Moore University of Arkansas Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the European History Commons, and the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Moore, Rebecca Marie, "The undeTh ring Throne: Personality, Poetics, and Gender in the Court of King Henry VIII" (2011). Theses and Dissertations. Paper 238. This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THE THUNDERING THRONE: PERSONALITY, POETICS, AND GENDER IN THE COURT OF KING HENRY VIII THE THUNDERING THRONE: PERSONALITY, POETICS, AND GENDER IN THE COURT OF KING HENRY VIII A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of the Arts in English By Rebecca Marie Moore University of Arkansas Bachelor of Arts in English, 2009 December 2011 University of Arkansas ABSTRACT This work examines gender in the court of King Henry VIII, focusing specifically on the role that the power and weight of Henry‘s personal decisions played in shaping the contemporary social definitions of femininity, masculinity, and courtiership. The space of courtiership is particularly open to such inquiry because this space was so often one that revealed the fissures and failures in attempts to maintain the strict binaries that privileged hegemonic masculinity under Henry.