1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910463236203321

Autore

McCracken Peggy

Titolo

The romance of adultery [[electronic resource] ] : queenship and sexual transgression in Old French literature / / Peggy McCracken

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia, : University of Pennsylvania Press, c1998

ISBN

0-8122-0274-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (192 p.)

Collana

The Middle Ages series

Disciplina

840.9/353

Soggetti

French literature - To 1500 - History and criticism

Romances - History and criticism

Adultery in literature

Queens in literature

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [205]-218) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: Defining Queenship in Medieval Europe -- 1. Royal Succession and the Queen's Two Bodies -- 2. Royal Sovereignty and the Test of the Queen's Body -- 3. Rumors, Rivalries, and the Queen's Secret Adultery -- 4. Adultery, Illegitimacy, and Royal Maternity -- 5. Seduction, Maternity, and Royal Authority -- Conclusion: Gendering Sovereignty in Medieval France -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Peggy McCracken offers a feminist historicist reading of Guenevere, Iseut, and other adulterous queens of Old French literature, and situates romance narratives about queens and their lovers within the broader cultural debate about the institution of queenship in twelfth- and thirteenth-century France.Moving among a wide selection of narratives that recount the stories of queens and their lovers, McCracken explores the ways adultery is appropriated into the political structure of romance. McCracken examines the symbolic meanings and uses of the queen's body in both romance and the historical institutions of monarchy and points toward the ways medieval romance contributed to the evolving definition of royal sovereignty as exclusively male.