Publications

Monographs:

Norrie, Aidan. Elizabeth I and the Old Testament: Biblical Analogies and Providential Rule. Bradford: Arc Humanities Press, forthcoming 2022.
[Publisher's Website]

Edited Collections:

Norrie, Aidan, and Sophie Shorland, eds. “Performing Royal Power in Premodern Europe.” Special issue, Royal Studies Journal 8, no. 1 (2021).
[Open Access]

Norrie, Aidan, and Mark Houlahan, eds. New Directions in Early Modern English Drama: Edges, Spaces, Intersections. Berlin: De Gruyter / Medieval Institute Publications, 2020.
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Gerzic, Marina, and Aidan Norrie, eds. Playfulness in Shakespearean Adaptations. New York: Routledge, 2020.
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Hopkins, Lisa, and Aidan Norrie, eds. Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019.
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Gerzic, Marina, and Aidan Norrie, eds. From Medievalism to Early-Modernism: Adapting the English Past. New York: Routledge, 2019.
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Book cover for New Directions in Early Modern English Drama: Edges, Spaces, Intersections

This collection examines some of the people, places, and plays at the edge of early modern English drama. Recent scholarship has begun to think more critically about the edge, particularly in relation to the canon and canonicity. This book demonstrates that the people and concepts long seen as on the edge of early modern English drama made vital contributions both within the fictive worlds of early modern plays, and without, in the real worlds of playmakers, theaters, and audiences. The book engages with topics such as child actors, alterity, sexuality, foreignness, and locality to acknowledge and extend the rich sense of playmaking and all its ancillary activities that have emerged over the last decade. The essays by a global team of scholars bring to life people and practices that flourished on the edge, manifesting their importance to both early modern audiences, and to current readers and performers.

Book cover for Playfulness in Shakespearean Adaptations

Four hundred years after William Shakespeare’s death, his works continue to not only fill playhouses around the world, but also be adapted in various forms for consumption in popular culture, including in film, television, comics and graphic novels, and digital media. Drawing on theories of play and adaptation, Playfulness in Shakespearean Adaptations demonstrates how the practices of Shakespearean adaptations are frequently products of playful, and sometimes irreverent, engagements that allow new ‘Shakespeares’ to emerge, revealing Shakespeare’s ongoing impact in popular culture. Significantly, this collection explores the role of play in the construction of meaning in Shakespearean adaptations—adaptations of both the works of Shakespeare, and of Shakespeare the man—and contributes to the growing scholarly interest in playfulness both past and present. The chapters in Playfulness in Shakespearean Adaptations engage with the diverse ways that play is used in Shakespearean adaptations on stage, screen, and page, examining how these adaptations draw out existing humour in Shakespeare’s works, the ways that play is used as a pedagogical aid to help explain complex language, themes, and emotions found in Shakespeare’s works, and more generally how play and playfulness can make Shakespeare ‘relatable,’ ‘relevant,’ and entertaining for successive generations of audiences and readers.

Book cover for Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe

Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe examines the lives of women whose gender impeded the exercise of their personal, political, and religious agency, with an emphasis on the conflict that occurred when they crossed the edges society placed on their gender. Many of the women featured in this collection have only been afforded cursory scholarly focus, or the focus has been isolated to a specific, (in)famous event. This collection redresses this imbalance by providing comprehensive discussions of the women’s lives, placing the matter that makes them known to history within the context of their entire life. Focusing on women from different backgrounds—such as Marie Meurdrac, the French chemist; Anna Trapnel, the Fifth Monarchist and prophetess; and Cecilia of Sweden, princess, margravine, countess, and regent—this collection brings together a wide range of scholars from a variety of disciplines to bring attention to these previously overlooked women.

Reviewed by Elisa Oh in Early Modern Women 14.2 (Spring 2020):
“Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe ... challenges readers to focus their attention on women who occupy material and ideological spaces defined as ‘the edge’ ... Spanning two and a half centuries (ca. 1457–ca. 1701), this collection attends to women who have been little studied or who have been studied primarily for one, narrow ‘(in)famous event’ (17). Such critical approaches that intentionally look away from the ‘center’ of early modern European cultures ... are an energizing way to recover and analyze early modern women’s intersectional experiences. ... Undeniably wide-reaching, this collection ... will be of interest and particular use to interdisciplinary early modern scholars of gender, European history, politics, the English Interregnum, monarchy, and literature.”

Reviewed by Jessica L. Malay in English Historical Review 135, no. 577 (December 2020):
“This collection of essays provides particular insights into women living on a variety of margins and their attempts to construct mechanisms to cope and prosper, to survive, or at least give their deaths alternative meaning. The essays encourage readers to consider the challenges the women present to more established modes of understanding the past and its relationship to the present.”

Reviewed by Britt Eyre-Mitchell in Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 20.3 (Summer 2020):
“In Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe, Lisa Hopkins and Aidan Norrie present a series of essays that begin to break up the parched soil of long-neglected early modern ‘women on the edge’ to make way for future scholars to plow, plant, and grow new research. ... The anthology makes a strong case for continued primary-source research into secondary and tertiary women of the early modern period who have previously been eclipsed by women holding primary roles in society as well as men who played both central and secondary roles. It also makes a case for more expansive coverage of women and their influence in even superficial treatments of the period. The soil has been turned, and the field, it turns out, has the potential to yield excellent fruit.”

Book cover for From Medievlism to Early-Modernism

From Medievalism to Early-Modernism: Adapting the English Past is a collection of essays that both analyses the historical and cultural medieval and early modern past, and engages with the medievalism and early-modernism—a new term introduced in this collection—present in contemporary popular culture. By focusing on often overlooked uses of the past in contemporary culture—such as the allusions to John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1623) in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, and the impact of intertextual references and internet fandom on the BBC’s The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses—the contributors illustrate how cinematic, televisual, artistic, and literary depictions of the historical and cultural past not only re-purpose the past in varying ways, but also build on a history of adaptations that audiences have come to know and expect. From Medievalism to Early-Modernism: Adapting the English Past analyses the way that the medieval and early modern periods are used in modern adaptations, and how these adaptations both reflect contemporary concerns, and engage with a history of intertextuality and intervisuality.

Reviewed by Stephanie Russo in Parergon 37.1 (2020):
“From Medievalism and Early-Modernism is a useful, engaging contribution to the growing body of scholarship interested in the ways in which the medieval and early modern periods have been rethought, adapted, and reinterpreted across centuries. In its innovative and fresh approach to the material, including insights gleaned from the disciplines of film and television studies, video game studies, and fan studies, it is likely to be of significant interest to scholars working on the complex, often surprising, afterlife of the medieval and early modern periods.”

Forthcoming

Norrie, Aidan, Carolyn Harris, Joanna Laynesmith, Danna Messer, and Elena Woodacre, eds. Norman to Early Plantagenet Consorts: Power, Influence, Dynasty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2022.

Norrie, Aidan, Carolyn Harris, Joanna Laynesmith, Danna Messer, and Elena Woodacre, eds. Later Plantagenet and Wars of the Roses Consorts: Power, Influence, Dynasty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2022.

Norrie, Aidan, Carolyn Harris, Joanna Laynesmith, Danna Messer, and Elena Woodacre, eds. Tudor and Stuart Consorts: Power, Influence, Dynasty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2022.

Norrie, Aidan, Carolyn Harris, Joanna Laynesmith, Danna Messer, and Elena Woodacre, eds. Hanoverian to Windsor Consorts: Power, Influence, Dynasty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2022.

Journal Articles:

Norrie, Aidan. “Biblical Typology and Royal Power in Elizabethan Civic Entertainments.” Royal Studies Journal 8, no. 1 (2021): 54–78.
[Open Access]

Norrie, Aidan, and Sophie Shorland. “Introduction: Performing Royal Power in Premodern Europe.” Royal Studies Journal 8, no. 1 (2021): 1–8.
[Open Access]

Norrie, Aidan. “James Shirley’s The Cardinal and Archbishop Laud.” Notes and Queries 67, no. 3 (September 2020): 374–378.
[Publisher's Website]

Norrie, Aidan. “Kings’ Stomachs and Concrete Elephants: Gendering Elizabeth I through the Tilbury Speech.” Royal Studies Journal 6, no. 2 (2019): 183–203.
[Open Access]

Norrie, Aidan. “The Bishop and the Queen; Or, Why Did the Bishop of Carlisle Crown Elizabeth I?” Northern History 56, nos. 1–2 (2019): 25–45.
[Publisher's Website]

Norrie, Aidan. “Child Actors in the 1578 Norwich Civic Entertainment.” Shakespeare Bulletin 37, no. 2 (Summer 2019): 167–185.
[Publisher's Website]

Norrie, Aidan. "Elizabeth I and the 'Proud Prelate.'" Notes and Queries 65, no. 4 (December 2018): 504–506.
[Publisher's Website]

Houlahan, Mark, and Aidan Norrie. "Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and Plutarch's Life of Demetrius." Notes and Queries 65, no. 4 (December 2018): 539–542.
[Publisher's Website]

Norrie, Aidan. "Elizabeth I as Judith: Reassessing the Apocryphal Widow's Appearance in Elizabethan Royal Iconography." Renaissance Studies 31, no. 5 (November 2017): 707–722.
[Publisher's Website]

Norrie, Aidan. "'Courageous, Zealous, Learned, Wise, and Chaste' – Queen Elizabeth I's Biblical Analogies After Her Death." Royal Studies Journal 2, no. 2 (2015): 25–44.
[Open Access]

Book Chapters:

Norrie, Aidan. "'Our Queen is Comming to the Town': Child Actors and Counsel in the Elizabethan Progresses of 1574 and 1578." In New Directions in Early Modern English Drama: Edges, Spaces, Intersections, edited by Aidan Norrie and Mark Houlahan, 97–116. Berlin: De Gruyter / Medieval Institute Publications, 2020.
[Buy Book]

Norrie, Aidan, and Mark Houlahan. "Introduction: Edges, Spaces, and Intersections in Early Modern English Drama." In New Directions in Early Modern English Drama: Edges, Spaces, Intersections, edited by Aidan Norrie and Mark Houlahan, 1–15. Berlin: De Gruyter / Medieval Institute Publications, 2020.
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Norrie, Aidan. "William Shakespeare and Elizabeth I: The Special Relationship?" In Playfulness in Shakespearean Adaptations, edited by Marina Gerzic and Aidan Norrie, 178–200. New York: Routledge, 2020.
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Gerzic, Marina, and Aidan Norrie. "'Did Shakespeare Really Write This Racy Stuff?': Playfulness in Shakespearean Adaptations." In Playfulness in Shakespearean Adaptations, edited by Marina Gerzic and Aidan Norrie, 1–16. New York: Routledge, 2020.
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Norrie, Aidan. "Female Pharaohs in Ancient Egypt." In The Routledge History of Monarchy, edited by Elena Woodacre, Lucinda H.S. Dean, Chris Jones, Zita Rohr, and Russell Martin, 501–517. New York: Routledge, 2019.
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Norrie, Aidan, and Lisa Hopkins. "Introduction: Early Modern European Women and the Edge." In Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe, edited by Lisa Hopkins and Aidan Norrie, 15–25. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019.
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Norrie, Aidan. "Cecilia of Sweden: Princess, Margravine, Countess, Regent." In Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe, edited by Lisa Hopkins and Aidan Norrie, 179–202. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019.
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Gerzic, Marina, and Aidan Norrie. "Introduction: Medievalism and Early-Modernism in Adaptations of the English Past." In From Medievalism to Early-Modernism: Adapting the English Past, edited by Marina Gerzic and Aidan Norrie, 1–17. New York: Routledge, 2019.
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Norrie, Aidan. "The Queen, the Bishop, the Virgin, and the Cross: Catholicism versus Protestantism in Elizabeth." In From Medievalism to Early-Modernism: Adapting the English Past, edited by Marina Gerzic and Aidan Norrie, 226–243. New York: Routledge, 2019.
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Norrie, Aidan. "Female Rangatira in Aotearoa New Zealand." In A Companion to Global Queenship, edited by Elena Woodacre, 109–121. Bradford: Arc Humanities Press, 2018.
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Norrie, Aidan. "A Man? A Woman? A Lesbian? A Whore?: Queen Elizabeth I and the Cinematic Subversion of Gender." In Premodern Rulers and Postmodern Viewers: Gender, Sex, and Power in Popular Culture, edited by Janice North, Karl C. Alvestad, and Elena Woodacre, 319–340. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
[Buy Book] [Chapter on Publisher's Website]

Book cover for A Companion to Global Queenship

Book cover for Premodern Rulers and Postmodern Viewers

Academic Reviews:

Norrie, Aidan. Review of Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Political Agency, Myth-Making, and Patronage, edited by Valerie Schutte and Estelle Paranque. Parergon 37, no. 2 (2020): 246–248.

Norrie, Aidan. Review of Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans: English Transnationalism and the Christian Commonwealth, by Brian C. Lockey. Parergon 36, no. 2 (2019): 259–260.
[Read Here]

Norrie, Aidan. Review of Unexpected Heirs in Early Modern Europe: Potential Kings and Queens, edited by Valerie Schutte. Royal Studies Journal 6, no. 1 (2019): 129–132.
[Read Here] [Review on Publisher's website]

Norrie, Aidan. Review of Baptist Women's Writings in Revolutionary Culture, 1640-1680, by Rachel Adcock. Parergon 35, no. 2 (2018): 243.
[Read Here]

Norrie, Aidan. Review of Cromwell: The Protector, by David Horspool. Royal Studies Journal 5, no. 2 (2018): 175–177.
[Read Here]

Norrie, Aidan. Review of The Politics of Counsel in England and Scotland, 1286-1707, edited by Jacqueline Rose. Parergon 35, no. 1 (2018): 201–203.
[Read Here] [Review on Publisher's website]

Norrie, Aidan. Review of Anna of Denmark and Henrietta Maria: Virgins, Witches, and Catholic Queens, by Susan Dunn-Hensley. Reviews in History (2018), doi:10.14296/RiH/2014/2253.
[Open Access]

Norrie, Aidan. Review of Elizabeth I's Italian Letters, edited and translated by Carlo M. Bajetta. Royal Studies Journal 5, no. 1 (2018): 206–208.
[Read Here] [Review on Publisher's website]

Norrie, Aidan. Review of History, Fiction, and "The Tudors": Sex, Politics, Power, and Artistic License in the Showtime Television Series, edited by William B. Robison. Royal Studies Journal 4, no. 2 (2017): 258–262.
[Read Here]

Norrie, Aidan. Review of Royal Mothers and Their Ruling Children: Wielding Political Authority from Antiquity to the Early Modern Era, edited by Elena Woodacre and Carey Fleiner. Parergon 33, no. 2 (2016): 178–180.
[Read Here] [Review on Publisher's website]

Norrie, Aidan. Review of Bishops and Power in Early Modern England, by Marcus K. Harmes. Parergon 33, no. 2 (2016): 187.
[Read Here]

Norrie, Aidan. Review of Boudica's Odyssey in Early Modern England, by Samantha Frénée-Hutchins. Parergon 33, no. 1 (2016): 266–267.
[Read Here] [Review on Publisher's website]

Norrie, Aidan. Review of Reformation Unbound: Protestant Visions of Reform in England, 1525-1590, by Karl Gunther. Parergon 33, no. 1 (2016): 268–269.
[Read Here]

Norrie, Aidan. Review of Supernatural and Secular Power in Early Modern England, edited by Marcus Harmes and Victoria Bladen. Parergon 32, no. 2 (2015): 348–350.
[Read Here]

Norrie, Aidan. Review of Renaissance Drama on the Edge, by Lisa Hopkins. Parergon 32, no. 2 (2015): 384–385.
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Norrie, Aidan. Review of Public Religious Disputation in England, 1558-1626, by Joshua Rodda. Parergon 32, no. 2 (2015): 299–300.
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Published Interviews and Other Publications:

Blog post about my research trip to the Newberry Library, Chicago.
[Link Here]

Interview for the Royal Studies Journal blog.
[Read Here]