Back to the beheading

That is, back to Anne Boleyn, whose progress was summarily halted by the need to write a paper about Mary I.  Where were we? Oh, yes: assembling the notes.  I'm one of those people who can't write from an outline.  Instead, I identify the key moments/themes/images/whatever I want to discuss, and then construct a reference sheet, like so:

Prophesies (the book with Anne’s decapitated head, Plaidy, LADY, 257-59, Peters, ROSE, 128-30; the Nun of Kent, Plaidy, LADY, 309-12, Turton, MY LORD, 130-31; foreshadowing, Peters, ROSE, 28, 71-72, 186 (Anne as linked to sacrifice—also Turton, MY LORD, 159, 174-77); soothsayer and Anne’s “witchcraft,” Wiat, HEIR, 49-51; and Wyatt’s “foreboding,” 124-25; and failure of the prophesies for Elizabeth’s birth, 188; symbol of Henry’s gift, Bradley, FAVOR, 77; and foreshadowing, 248; Drew, ANNE BOLEYN, 315-19)

As I've just started arranging my references, these notes cover just a scant handful of texts; the final bibliography clocks in at around forty-five novels and short stories written between 1902-2006.   Once I've finished working up the primary references, I'll do the same for any critical texts I plan to use.  Then I can go on to write the article itself. 

It became clear early on that I wasn't going to write an "images of..." study, largely because the parameters for Anne's fictional incarnations have barely budged at all since the 1930s.  Instead, with apologies to Nancy Armstrong, I'm interested in how novelists use Anne Boleyn to think about historical process, narrative, and, indeed, genre.  Obviously, since I'm talking about popular historical romances (or, to be more precise, anti-romances), coherent philosophies of history are not at issue here.  Instead, I'm tracking what the intellectual historian D. R. Woolf calls "historical thinking"--how writers in multiple genres, popular and scholarly, understand and narrate the past.  Part of my project involves, as you might expect, untangling the connections between the narrator's understanding of historical narrative and the characters'; hence, for example, the notes on prophesy.