In Queens and Power in Medieval and Early Modern England, Carole Levin and Robert Bucholz provide a forum for the underexamined, anomalous reigns of queens in history. These regimes, primarily regarded as interruptions to the ?normal? male monarchy, have been examined largely as isolated cases. This interdisciplinary study of queens throughout history examines their connections to one another, their constituents? perceptions of them, and the fallacies of their historical reputations. The contributors consider historical queens as well as fictional, mythic, and biblical queens and how they were represented in medieval and early modern England. They also give modern readers a glimpse into the early modern worldview, particularly regarding order, hierarchy, rulership, property, biology, and the relationship between the sexes. Considering topics as diverse as how Queen Elizabeth?s unmarried status affected the perception of her as a just and merciful queen to a reevaluation of ?good Queen Anne? as more than just an obese, conventional monarch, this volume encourages readers to reexamine previously held assumptions about the role of female monarchs in early modern history.

The essays in this volume consider three aspects of queenship and politics: the institutional foundations and practice of politics, the politics of religion and religious devotion, and the literary and artistic representations of queenship and power. They address the distinctive Spanish political culture that resulted in a form of queenship similar to, yet also substantially different from, that of northern Europe.

Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe examines queens dowager and queens consort who have disappeared from history or have been deeply misunderstood in modern historical treatment. Divided into eleven chapters, this book covers queenship from 1016 to 1800, demonstrating the influence of queens in different aspects of monarchy over eight centuries and furthering our knowledge of the roles and challenges that they faced. It also promotes a deeper understanding of the methods of power and patronage for women who were not queens, many of which have since become mythologized into what historians have wanted them to be. The chronological organisation of the book, meanwhile, allows the reader to see more clearly how these forgotten queens are related by the power, agency, and patronage they displayed, despite the mythologization to which they have all been subjected. Offering a broad geographical coverage and providing a comparison of queenship across a range of disciplines, such as religious history, art history, and literature, Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe is ideal for students and scholars of pre-modern queenship and of medieval and early modern history courses more generally.

This volume is an attempt to discuss the ways in which themes of authority and gender can be traced in the writing of chronicles and chronicle-like writings from the early Middle Ages to the Renaissance. With major contributions by fourteen authors, each of them specialists in the field, this study spans full across the compass of medieval and early modern Europe, from England and Scandinavia, to Byzantium and the Crusader Kingdoms; embraces a variety of media and methods; and touches evidence from diverse branches of learning such as language and literature, history and art, to name just a few. This is an important collection which will be of the highest utility for students and scholars of language, literature, and history for many years to come.

This edited collection opens new ways to look at queenship in areas and countries not usually studied and reflects the increasingly interdisciplinary work and geographic range of the field. This book is a forerunner in queenship and re-invents the reputations of the women and some of the men. The contributors answers questions about the nature of queenship, reputation of queens, and gender roles in the medieval and early modern west. The essays question the viability of propaganda, gossip, and rumor that still characterizes some queens in modern histories. The wide geographic range covered by the contributors moves queenship studies beyond France and England to understudied places such as Sweden and Hungary. Even the essays on more familiar countries explores areas not usually studied, such as the role of Edward II’s stepmother, Margaret of France in Gaveston’s downfall. The chapters clearly have a common thread and the editors’ summary and description of the collection is valuable in assisting the reader. The collection is divided into two sections “Biography, Gossip, and History” and “Politics, Ambition, and Scandal.” The editors and contributors, including Zita Eva Rohr and Elena Woodacre, are scholars at the top of their field and several and engage and debate with recent scholarship. This collection will appeal internationally to literary scholars and gender studies scholars as well historians interested in the countries included in the collection.

Medieval queens led richly complex lives and were highly visible women active in a man's world. Linked to kings by marriage, family, and property, queens were vital to the institution of monarchy. In this comprehensive and accessible introduction to the study of queenship, Theresa Earenfight documents the lives and works of queens and empresses across Europe, Byzantium, and the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages. The book: - Introduces pivotal research and sources in queenship studies, and includes exciting and innovative new archival research - Highlights four crucial moments across the full span of the Middle Ages – ca. 300, 700, 1100, and 1350 – when Christianity, education, lineage, and marriage law fundamentally altered the practice of queenship - Examines theories and practices of queenship in the context of wider issues of gender, authority, and power. This is an invaluable and illuminating text for students, scholars and other readers interested in the role of royal women in medieval society.

Between 1308 and 1485, nine women were married to kings of England. Their status as queen offered them the opportunity to exercise authority in a manner that was denied to other women of the time. This book offers a new study of these nine queens and their queenship in late medieval England.

She Wolves is a history of the 'bad girls' of England's medieval royal dynasties - the queens who earned themselves the reputation of being somehow notorious. Some of them are well known and have been the subject of biographies - Eleanor of Aquitaine, Emma of Normandy, Isabella of France and Anne Boleyn, for example - while others have not been written about outside academic journals. The appeal of these notorious queens, apart from their shared taste for witchcraft, murder, adultery and incest, is that, because they were notorious, they attracted a great deal of attention during their lifetimes. She Wolves reveals much about the role of the medieval queen and the evolution of the role that led, ultimately, to the reign of Elizabeth I, and a new concept of queenship.

The image, status and function of queens and empresses, regnant and consort, in kingdoms stretching from England to Jerusalem in the European middle ages. Did queens exercise real or counterfeit power? Did the promotion of the cult of the Virgin enhance or restrict their sphere of action? Is it time to revise the early feminist view of women as victims? Important papers on Emma of England, Margaret of Scotland, coronation and burial ritual, Byzantine empresses and Scandinavian queens, among others, clearly indicate that a reassessment of the role of women in the world of medieval dynastic politics is under way. Contributors: JANOS BAK, GEORGE CONKLIN, PAUL CROSSLEY, VOLKER HONEMANN, STEINAR IMSEN, LIZ JAMES, KURT-ULRICH JASCHKE, SARAH LAMBERT, JANET L. NELSON, JOHN C. PARSONS, KAREN PRATT, DION SMYTHE, PAULINE STAFFORD, MARY STROLL, VALERIE WALL, ELIZABETH WARD, DIANA WEBB.

The Renaissance woman, whether privileged or of the artisan or the middle class, was trained in the expressive arts of needlework and painting, which were often given precedence over writing. Pens and Needles is the first book to examine all these forms as interrelated products of self-fashioning and communication. Because early modern people saw verbal and visual texts as closely related, Susan Frye discusses the connections between the many forms of women's textualities, including notes in samplers, alphabets both stitched and penned, initials, ciphers, and extensive texts like needlework pictures, self-portraits, poetry, and pamphlets, as well as commissioned artwork, architecture, and interior design. She examines works on paper and cloth by such famous figures as Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Bess of Hardwick, as well as the output of journeywomen needleworkers and miniaturists Levina Teerlinc and Esther Inglis, and their lesser-known sisters in the English colonies of the New World. Frye shows how traditional women's work was a way for women to communicate with one another and to shape their own identities within familial, intellectual, religious, and historical traditions. Pens and Needles offers insights into women's lives and into such literary texts as Shakespeare's Othello and Cymbeline and Mary Sidney Wroth's Urania.