ABSTRACT

Over the past few years, the New Year's gift manuscripts written by Elizabeth I before her reign for members of her family have been receiving more and more critical and scholarly attention. With varying degrees of persuasiveness, many commentators have mined these beautiful italic texts, particularly the 1544/5 translation of Marguerite de Navarre's poem Le miroir de l'iime pecheresse (1531), for clues to Elizabeth's personal relationships. 1 My aim here is to complement this work by providing a broad historico-religious context for the manuscripts. Elizabeth's New Year's gifts, I will argue, were produced at a key moment of transition and accommodation between medieval 'Catholicism' and early modern 'Protestantism'. Texts produced at this liminal point by Elizabeth and others - women active in the shaping of the English Reformation - helped set the parameters for a good deal of pious writing in prose and poetry in early modem England.