Antiquity and the Present in William Camden´s Annales

The Annales by William Camden (1551-1623) are the first continuous history of the reign of the English queen Elizabeth I (reigned 1558-1603), and are of particular interest as the work of a contemporary. The Annales continue to have a profound influence on the ways in which the history of the period is understood and retold. For centuries, however, readers have approached the Annales primarily through English translations of the 17th century, rather than in the original Latin. This project supported by the Lise Meitner Programme of the Austrian Science Fund reassesses the Annales in Latin, exploring the influence of ancient history and literature on Camdens work and the connections between the Annales and contemporary traditions of humanist history writing. The study includes a particular focus on Camdens engagement with the work of the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus, whose works were widely read and hotly debated amongst English intellectuals and members of the ruling class in Camdens time. The project pays attention to Camdens methodological remarks, his use of the year-on-year format of writing annals, the arrangement of material into episodes and characterisation. Important aspects of the content of the Annales include Camdens handling of conspiracy and war narratives and the use of the concept of the barbarian, as well as the role of gender in the Annales. Camdens handling of recent history will be discussed with reference to Tacitus as a model of critical history writing. The project will test Patrick Collinsons contention that Camden was not responsible for the glorifying myth of Elizabeth but offered a more ambivalent appraisal of the queen. The project challenges some persistent tendencies in the scholarship on Camden, in particular an anachronistic tendency to regard him as a modern historian and to overemphasise English exceptionalism rather than the European intellectual context of his work. Too often Camdens own prefatory remarks have been taken at face value, including the claim that the Annales are a simple, unadorned documentary enterprise. This project proposes to read the Annales as a sophisticated literary work in the classical humanist mould. The main scholarly outputs will be a monograph on antiquity and the present in Camdens Annales and a journal article. In addition, an international conference on early modern Tacitus reception will be convened in the second year of the project, with a volume of collected essays to be published subsequently. Wider communication initiatives will include podcasts and a project website.