God Save the Queen!
Ruling Women from Rome to the Renaissance
(HL90an)
Fall 2013
Mondays, 1300-1500
Instructor: Sean Gilsdorf
E-mail:
gilsdorf@fas.harvard.edu
Office hours: Tuesdays, 0900-1030
God save the queen, she ain't no human being . . .
God save the queen—we mean it, man
We love our queen God saves!
While the Sex Pistols would have been comfortably out of place in a medieval palace,
their ambivalent lyrics might have struck a chord with contemporary audiences. Queens,
empresses, and other female figures of authority occupied a curious position within
medieval society: respected and even feared for the power they could exercise, they also
were disdained for the gender they embodied. Loved and even revered as mothers by
their subjects, they also were criticized as corrupters and sources of confusion for
"proper" rulership.
This semester, we will explore the complex and contradictory figure of the royal woman
from Late Antiquity to the early modern period, discussing the varied roles that queens
played within their societies, their relationship to broader social and cultural institutions
such as the Christian Church, and the ways in which queens were celebrated, criticized,
and imagined by writers and artists of their time. By doing so, we will gain a better
understanding not only of the meaning and significance of queens and queenship in
medieval Europe, but of broader ideological and cultural issues as well: the significance of
sex and gender as components of identity, the intersection between gender and various
forms of power, and the role of kinship and other seemingly "private" relationships in the
"public" realm of premodern politics.
This course will emphasize discussion by you and me of a series of texts and images,
organized around a series of chronologically-organized themes. Each of you, therefore,
will be expected to come to class not only having read the material, but having thought
about it critically, and prepared to express your views and consider the views of others.
The culmination of this work will be an academic conference at the end of the semester,
in which each of you will present twenty-minute papers on a topic to be determined in
consultation with me. While these papers, together with the scholarly apparatus
underpinning them (i.e. footnotes and bibliography) will be submitted to me at the end of
the semester, your conference presentation as well as your participation as interlocutors
for your colleagues will serve as the real capstone to the seminar as a whole. In order to
prepare you for success, I will include a number of research-related projects and
presentations during the semester, which will provide you not only with the tools you will
need to write your papers, but with a running start on the process of topic selection,
research, and writing itself.
Reading materials (required)
Anne Duggan (ed.), Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe. Boydell and Brewer, 2002
(QQ)
John Carmi Parsons (ed.), Medieval Queenship. Palgrave-Macmillan, 1997 (MQ)
Prokopios, The Secret History, trans. Anthony Kaldellis. Hackett, 2010.
Sean Gilsdorf, Queenship and Sanctity: The Lives of Mathilda and the Epitaph of Adelheid.
Catholic University of America Press, 2004 (QS).
Chrétien de Troyes, The Complete Romances of Chrétien de Troyes, trans. David Staines.
Indiana University Press, 1990 (CT).
Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. Rosalind Brown-Grant. Penguin,
2000 (BCL).
William Shakespeare, Macbeth, ed. Nicholas Brooke. Oxford University Press, 2008.
A number of other readings are available on the course iSite (designated in the schedule
with an asterix)
Schedule
Weeks 1-2 (9-16 September)
Augusta: The Empress in Old and New Rome
*Laudatio Turiae
*Ambrose, On the Emperor Theodosius (selections)
*Holum, "Theodosius the Great and his Women"
Procopius, Secret History
*Garland, "Theodora"
Weeks 3-4 (23-30 September)
Sinners and Saints: Concubines and Royal Wives in the Frankish World
*Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks (selections)
*Venantius Fortunatus, Life of Radegund
*Anonymous, Life of Balthild
*Clover, "Regardless of Sex"
*Nelson, "Queens as Jezebels"
*Wood, "Deconstructing the Merovingian Family"
Weeks 5-6 (7 and 21 October)
Home Sweet (?) Home: Creating "Queenship" in Carolingian Europe
*Ermoldus the Black, Poem in Honor of Louis (selections)
*Sedulius Scottus, On Christian Rulers (selections)
Nelson, "Women at the Court of Charlemagne" (MQ)
*Ward, "Caesar's Wife"
*Hincmar of Reims, "On the Governance of the Palace"
Nelson, "Early Medieval Rites of Queen-Making" (QQ)
*"Lothar II's Divorce"
*Airlie, "Private Bodies and the Body Politic"
Week 7 (28 October)
Mother of Kingdoms: Family and Rulership in the Tenth Century
Lives of Mathilda (QS)
*Quedlinburg Annals (selections)
Stafford, "Portrayal of Royal Women" (MQ)
Weeks 8-9 (4-11 November)
Queen Takes Knight: The Queen as Patron and Pawn
*Encomium Emmae Reginae
Stafford, "Emma: The Powers of the Queen" (QQ)
*Wace, Roman de Brut, lines 8541-8856; 9641-58; 10171-10620; 11173-11204; 13010-13274.
Chrétien, The Knight of the Cart (CT)
*McCracken, "Rumors, Rivalries, and the Queen's Secret Adultery"
Huneycutt, "Female Succession" (MQ)
Week 10 (18 November)
Fame and Fortune: Queens and the Querelle des Femmes
*Boccaccio, Famous Men and Famous Women (excerpts)
Christine de Pizan (BCL)
Wolf, "Reigning Queens" (MQ)
Pratt, "The Image of the Queen" (QQ)
Weeks 11-12 (25 November-2 December)
Perilous Power: The Queen as Virgin, Viper, and Virago
*John Knox, The First Blast of the Trumpet
*Elizabeth I, speeches on marriage and succession (1559-67)
*Jankowski, "The Body Natural and the Body Politic"
Shakespeare, Macbeth
Friday, 6 December
Consors Regni: Medieval Queens in Context
9:00 am - 4:00 pm
Appendix:
Conference paper writing schedule
Week 4: Individual paper topic conferences
Week 8: Paper draft conferences
Week 10: Conference panel assignments
Week 11: Final drafts due