Full Description
What is the gender of political power? Since the beginning of political thought, rule has been a male prerogative in European imagination. This is of course not to say that there never were women sovereigns. In-depth studies of women sovereigns have grown considerably in number in the past three decades and have added substantially to our understanding of the complexities of their rule of power.
Yet what is often obscured by such in-depth analyses is the fact that all women rulers throughout the entirety of European cultural history have had to operate in a context that could not think of power as female--except in grotesque terms. This continuity, as this book demonstrates, can only be brought out by studying women's political rule comparatively and in the longue duree.
This collection of essays brings together studies of female sovereignty from the Polish-Lithuanian to the British Commonwealth, and from the Middle Ages to the dawn of modern democracy. It demonstrates how the strategies and imagination women rulers adopted against the backdrop of an all-pervasive scepticism toward female rule are comparable across regions and periods. To illustrate its point, this book not only addresses historical figures and queens, but also takes stock of the rich yet unsettling imagination of female rule in philosophy, literature and art history.
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Contributors: Marnix Beyen (Universiteit Antwerpen), Aude Defurne (KU Leuven), Ann-Kathrin Deininger (Universitat Bonn), Maha El Hissy (Queen Mary University of London), Anke Gilleir (KU Leuven), Ayaal Herdam (Universite de Bordeaux), Josephine Hoegaerts (University of Helsinki), Elisabeth Krimmer (University of California, Davis), Jasmin Leuchtenberg (Universitat Bonn), Joanna Marschner (Historic Royal Palaces London), Virginia McKendry (Royal Roads University), Jaroslaw Pietrzak (Pedagogical University Krakow), Maria Cristina Quintero (Bryn Mawr College), David J. Smallwood (Sciences Po Bordeaux), Beatrijs Vanacker (KU Leuven)
Contents
ON GENDER, SOVEREIGNTY AND IMAGINATION
An Introduction
Anke Gilleir
PART 1: REPRESENTATIONS OF FEMALE SOVEREIGNTY
CAMILLA AND CANDACIS
Literary Imaginations of Female Sovereignty in German Romances of the Late Twelfth Century
Ann-Kathrin Deininger and Jasmin Leuchtenberg
ROYAL HOUSEWIVES AND FEMALE TYRANTS
Gender and Sovereignty in Works by Benedikte Naubert and Luise Mühlbach Elisabeth Krimmer
OF MAIDENS AND VIRGINS, OR, SPARKING MILITARY ALLIANCE
The Affective Politics of the Pristine Female Body
Maha El Hissy
RELATIONAL AUTHORITY AND FEMALE SOVEREIGNTY
Fanny Burney's Early Court Journals and Letters
Beatrijs Vanacker
THE SOUND OF SOVEREIGNTY
Royal Vocal Strategies in the Victorian House of Lords Josephine Hoegaerts
PART 2: PLACES AND SPACES OF POWER
THE QUEEN FROM THE SOUTH
Eleanor of Aquitaine as a Political Strategist and Lawmaker Ayaal Herdam and David J. Smallwood
THE SPACES OF FEMALE SOVEREIGNTY IN EARLY MODERN SPAIN
Maria Cristina Quintero
FRENCH ARISTOCRAT AND POLISH QUEEN
Maria Kazimiera d'Arquien Sobieska's Strategies of Power (1674-1698)
Jarosław Pietrzak
BECOMING BRITISH
The Role of the Hanoverian Queen Consort
Joanna Marschner
TAMING THE SOVEREIGN
Princess Charlotte of Wales and the Rhetoric of Gender Virginia McKendry
DISCOURSES OF SOVEREIGNTY AS AN OBSTACLE TO WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE?
An Essay in Comparative History
Marnix Beyen
