Inventing Eleanor

Inventing Eleanor
Author: Michael R. Evans
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2014-09-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1441141359

Eleanor of Aquitaine (1124-1204), queen of France and England and mother of two kings, has often been described as one of the most remarkable women of the Middle Ages. Yet her real achievements have been embellished--and even obscured--by myths that have grown up over eight centuries. This process began in her own lifetime, as chroniclers reported rumours of her scandalous conduct on crusade, and has continued ever since. She has been variously viewed as an adulterous queen, a monstrous mother and a jealous murderess, but also as a patron of literature, champion of courtly love and proto-feminist defender of women's rights. Inventing Eleanor interrogates the myths that have grown up around the figure of Eleanor of Aquitaine and investigates how and why historians and artists have invented an Eleanor who is very different from the 12th-century queen. The book first considers the medieval primary sources and then proceeds to trace the post-medieval development of the image of Eleanor, from demonic queen to feminist icon, in historiography and the broader culture.

Eleanor of Aquitaine

Eleanor of Aquitaine
Author: Sara Cockerill
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
Total Pages: 630
Release: 2019-11-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1445646188

'Impeccably researched and beautifully written, this book offers a fresh perspective on one of the most controversial queens in history. Not to be missed.' Tracey Borman

The Invention of Female Biography

The Invention of Female Biography
Author: Gina Luria Walker
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 427
Release: 2017-10-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1351265180

Mary Hays worked alone in compiling the 302 entries that make up Female Biography (1803). By contrast, producing a modern, critical edition of the work relied on the expertise of 168 scholars across 18 countries. Essays in this collection focus on the exhaustive research, editorial challenges and innovative responses involved in this project.

Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Author: Valerie Schutte
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2018-10-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351618733

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.

The Crusades

The Crusades
Author: S.J. Allen
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2024-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 148753793X

Since its first appearance in 2004, The Crusades: A Reader has been the go-to sourcebook in the field. S.J. Allen and Emilie Amt cover the entire crusading movement, from its origins to its modern afterlife, using key primary source documents. The third edition features a new introduction that includes a guide for students on how to use the book. The editors have also added more content on women, material culture, Jewish and Byzantine perspectives, Muslim-Crusader interactions, and modern use of Crusade imagery and rhetoric by the Far Right. The geographic range is broad, covering not only Crusades in the Middle East, but also in Spain and in northern Europe and against European heretics. While scholarship, courses, and textbooks on the Crusades have proliferated over the past twenty years, The Crusades: A Reader remains the only comprehensive, up-to-date, and in-print sourcebook available on the subject.

Memorialising Premodern Monarchs

Memorialising Premodern Monarchs
Author: Gabrielle Storey
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2021-11-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 3030841308

This book examines the legacies and depictions of monarchs in an international context, focusing on both self-representation and commemoration by others. Spanning ancient India through to eighteenth-century Russia, this volume offers several case studies to demonstrate trends and patterns in how different societies chose to commemorate and remember their rulers in a variety of mediums. Contributions highlight several lesser known rulers, alongside more famous ones such as Henry VIII of England, to develop a deeper understanding of how memory and monarchy functioned when drawn together. Memorialising Premodern Monarchs brings to the fore the importance of memory and memorialisation when considering the legacies and records of past rulers and their societies, and allows a deeper reflection on how these rulers live on through the historical record and popular culture.

Medieval Women and War

Medieval Women and War
Author: Sophie Harwood
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2020-07-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350150401

For the first time, Sophie Harwood uses the Old French tradition as a lens through which to examine women and warfare from the 12th to the 14th centuries. The result is a skilled analysis of gender roles in the medieval era, and a heightened awareness of how important literary texts are to our understanding of the historical period in which they circulated. Medieval Women and War examines both the text and illustrations of over 30 Old French manuscripts to highlight the ways in many of the texts differ from their traditionally assumed (usually classical) sources. Structured around five pivotal female types – women cited as causes for violence, women as victims of violence, women as ancillaries to warriors, women as warriors themselves, and women as political influences – this important book unpicks gendered boundaries to shed new light on the social, political and military structures of warfare as well as adding nuance to current debates on womanhood in the middle ages.

Earnest, Earnest?

Earnest, Earnest?
Author: Eleanor Boudreau
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 91
Release: 2020-09-08
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0822987899

In Earnest, Earnest?, the speaker, Eleanor, writes postcards to her on-again-off-again lover, Earnest. The fact that her lover’s name is Earnest and that their relationship is fraught, raises questions of sincerity and irony, and whether both can be present at the same time. While Earnest can be read literally as Eleanor’s lover, he is best understood as another side of the poet’s self. The ambiguity at play in Earnest, Earnest? is embodied in the form of the “Earnest Postcards” that structure the book—these postcards are experimental in their use of images and formal in their dialogue with the sonnet. Thus, Earnest, Earnest? is a question of tone, address, and form.

It Ended Badly

It Ended Badly
Author: Jennifer Wright
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2015-11-03
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1627792864

"In It Ended Badly, New York Observer columnist Jennifer Wright guides you through thirteen of the worst breakups of notable figures in history" from Emperor Nero to Oskar Kokoschka and Norman Mailer. "--