The Body of the Queen: Gender and Rule in the Courtly World, 1500-2000

by Regina Schulte (Editor)

Overview

"This book is a welcome...contribution to the growing literature on queens. That it scrutinizes so many queens in so many different contexts will give this collection broad appeal and make it appropriate reading in university courses devoted to gender and power." - Francia

How many "bodies" does a queen have? What is the significance of multiple "bodies"? How has the gendered body been constructed and perceived within the context of the European courts during the course of the past five centuries? These are some of the questions addressed in this anthology, a contribution to the ongoing debate provoked by Ernst H. Kantorowicz in his seminal work from 1957, The King's Two Bodies. On the basis of both textual self-presentations and visual representations a gradual transformation of the queen appears: A sacred/providential figure in medieval and early modern period, an ideal bourgeois wife during the late-18th and 19th Centuries, and a star-like (re-) presentation of royalty during the past century. Twentieth-century mass media has produced the celebrity and film star queens personified by the contested and enigmatic Nefertiti of ancient Egypt, the mysterious Elizabeth (Sisi) of Austria, Grace Kelly as Queen of both Hollywood and Monaco and Romy Schneider as the invented Empress.

Regina Schulte's main fields of research are social and cultural history from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, especially the history of crime, gender and war. She taught Modern History and Gender History at Technical University Berlin, Bochum, Cornell University, and European University Institute Florence. Currently she holds a Chair of Modern and Contemporary History/Gender History at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845451592
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	04/01/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.78(d)

About the Author

Regina Schulte's main fields of research are social and cultural history from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, especially the history of crime, gender and war. She taught Modern History and Gender History at Technical University Berlin, Bochum, Cornell University, and European University Institute Florence. Currently she holds a Chair of Modern and Contemporary History/Gender History at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Foreword
List of Contributors

Chapter 1. Introduction: Conceptual Approaches to the Queen’s Body
Regina Schulte

PART I: CONSTRUCTING THE BODY POLITIC

Chapter 2. How Two Ladies Steal a Crown: The Memoirs of Helene Kottannerin (1439–40) at the Court of Queen Elisabeth of Hungary (1409–42)
Horst Wenzel

Chapter 3. Elizabeth When a Princess: Early Self-representations in a Portrait and a Letter
Susan Frye

Chapter 4. Elizabeth through the Looking Glass: Picturing the Queen’s Two Bodies
Louis Montrose

Chapter 5. Royal Flesh, Gender and the Construction of Monarchy
Rachel Weil

PART II: TRANSGRESSING THE BODY NATURAL

Chapter 6. What the King Saw in the Belly of the Beast or How the Lion Got in the Queen: Allegories of Royal Procreation in the 1622 Royal Entry into Lyon
Abby E. Zanger

Chapter 7. Posterity and the Body of the Princess in German Court Funeral Books
Jill Bepler

Chapter 8. ‘Madame, Ma Chère Fille’ – ‘Dearest Child’: Letters from Imperial Mothers to Royal Daughters
Regina Schulte

PART III: QUEENS OF MODERNITY

Chapter 9. Queen Margherita (1851–1926): 'The Only Man in the House of Savoy'
Catherine Brice

Chapter 10. The Double Skin: Imperial Fashion in the Nineteenth Century
Juliane Vogel

Chapter 11. Theatrical Monarchy: The Making of Victoria, the Modern Family Queen
Bernd Weisbrod

Chapter 12. The Unmanly Emperor: Wilhelm II and the Fragility of the Royal Individual
Martin Kohlrausch

PART IV: VISUAL METAMORPHOSES

Chapter 13. The ‘Berlin’ Nefertiti Bust: Imperial Fantasies in Twentieth-Century German Archaeological Discourse
Claudia Breger

Chapter 14. Imagined Queens between Heaven and Hell: Representations of Grace Kelly and Romy Schneider
Alexis Schwarzenbach

Chapter 15. Queer Queen: Elizabeth I in Sally Potter’s Film Orlando
Katharina Sykora

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"This book is a welcome...contribution to the growing literature on queens. That it scrutinizes so many queens in so many different contexts will give this collection broad appeal and make it appropriate reading in university courses devoted to gender and power." - Francia

From the Publisher