Parergon

Abstract:

Encounters with the ghost of Anne Boleyn are one of the strangest, yet persistent, aspects of her literary afterlife, as well as the folklore associated with her memory. Writers have continually imagined (or believed) the enticing prospect of being able to directly question the executed queen about the circumstances of her life and death. What unites all these accounts of a post-mortem Boleyn is their conviction that the past can be made to signify in the present: that historical figures of the early modern world can be made to explain themselves and provide an interpretive lens for understanding historical events.