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The Body of the Queen

The Body of the Queen

Regina Schulte

(2006)

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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