FORGING MASCULINITIES: ARMOUR AND THE FASHIONING OF IDENTITY IN ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND

Prior scholarly examinations of armour have mainly been confined to discussions of provenance, technological developments and advances in design. Armour has also been largely overlooked within other disciplinary fields. There has been very little exploration of the complex social and cultural markers embedded within the fabric of these objects and the messages which the wearer may have wished to convey through them. This study seeks to demonstrate that armour should be seen as a dynamic agency rather than an inactive object. It will contribute to existing scholarship by considering armour as a platform through which constructions of both group and individual identity were performed. It is unique in exploring the way in which armour circulated amongst different artistic practices and will use an interdisciplinary approach to question the role these objects and their painted representations played in the fashioning and display of male identity in Elizabethan England. This thesis is original in demonstrating that a further study of these fascinating objects can greatly benefit interdisciplinary research and understanding of historical identity, human experience, material and visual culture. By exploring the ways in which armour and its representations within portraiture facilitated and also dictated representations of elite masculinity, I hope to contribute to a greater understanding of the ways in which material and visual culture were used as platforms for the projection of male identity in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England.