Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay examines how Francis Bacon’s speech in Calvin’s Case (1608) and Edward Coke’s report on the case engage with the doctrine of the king’s two bodies. While both texts portray the subject as perpetually obligated to the king’s personal body, the ambiguity of the doctrine combined with the topical resources of early-modern legal rhetoric allowed for disparate constructions of the king’s two bodies that could at once support and displace the absolute sovereignty of the king’s personal body. In the end, I argue that both texts offer distinct contributions to the early-modern era’s budding anti-royalist discourse.

Journal
Advances in the History of Rhetoric
Published
2017-09-02
DOI
10.1080/15362426.2017.1384768
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Also cites 10 works outside this index ↓
  1. The Origins of Historical Jurisprudence: Coke, Seldon, Hale
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  2. Law’s Territory (A History of Jurisdiction)
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  3. The Ancient Constitution and the Expanding Empire: Sir Edward Coke’s British Jurisprudence
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  4. Machiavellian Rhetoric: From the Counter-Reformation to Milton
  5. Political Theology and Fiction in The King’s Two Bodies.
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  6. Francis Bacon on the Science of Jurisprudence
    Journal of the History of Ideas  
  7. Popular Sovereignty in Early Modern Constitutional Thought
  8. The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the…
  9. The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
  10. Sovereignty in Fragments: The Past, Present, and Future of a Contested Concept
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