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Abstract
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.
“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
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
Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
---|---|---|---|
The Body of the Queen | 1 | ||
Contents | 5 | ||
Foreword | 11 | ||
1. Introduction | 13 | ||
Part I. Constructing the Body Politic | 29 | ||
2. How Two Ladies Steal a Crown | 31 | ||
3. Elizabeth When a Princess | 55 | ||
4. Elizabeth through the Looking Glass | 73 | ||
5. Royal Flesh, Gender and the Construction of Monarchy | 100 | ||
Part II. Transgressing the Body Natural | 113 | ||
6. What the King Saw in the Belly of the Beast or How the Lion Got in the Queen | 115 | ||
7. Posterity and the Body of the Princess in German Court Funeral Books | 137 | ||
8. ‘Madame, Ma Chère Fille’– ‘Dearest Child’ | 168 | ||
Part III. Queens of Modernity | 205 | ||
9. Queen Margherita (1851–1926) | 207 | ||
10. The Double Skin Imperial Fashion in the Nineteenth Century | 228 | ||
11. Theatrical Monarchy | 250 | ||
12. The Unmanly Emperor | 266 | ||
Part IV. Visual Metamorphoses | 291 | ||
13. The ‘Berlin’ Nefertiti Bust | 293 | ||
14. Imagined Queens between Heaven and Hell | 318 | ||
15. Queer Queen | 339 | ||
Selected Bibliography | 355 | ||
Index | 371 |