Women and Power at the French Court, 1483-1563 / edited by Susan Broomhall.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed December 12, 2018).

This book explores the ways in which a range of women-as consorts, regents, mistresses, factional power players, attendants at court, or as objects of courtly patronage-wielded power in order to advance individual, familial, and factional agendas in the early sixteenth-century French court. Spring boarding from the burgeoning scholarship of gender, the political, and power in early modern Europe, the book provides a perspective from the French court, from the reigns of Charles VIII to Henri II, a time at which the French court was a glittering centre of culture and which women are understood to have played increasingly important roles. Cross-disciplinary in its perspectives, these essays by historians, art and literary scholars cohesively investigate the dynamic operations of gendered power in political acts, recognised status as queens and regents, ritualised behaviors such as gift-giving, educational coteries, courtly household organisation, and social networking, literary and artistic patronage, female authorship, and epistolary strategies.

Includes bibliographical references.

pt. I Conceptualizing and Practicing Female Power -- 1. The Political, Symbolic, and Courtly Power of Anne de France and Louise de Savoie -- From the Genesis to the Glory of Female Regency / Aubree David-Chapy -- 2. Anne de France and Gift-Giving -- The Exercise of Female Power / Tracy Adams -- 3. Louise de Savoie -- The King's Mother, Alter Rex / Mary Beth Winn -- pt. II Centers and Peripheries of Power -- 4. Literary Lessons in Queenship and Power -- Mary Tudor Brandon and the Authority of the Ambassador-Queen / Erin A. Sadlack -- 5. Claude de France and the Spaces of Agency of a Marginalized Queen / Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier -- 6. Portraits of Eleanor of Austria -- From Invisible to Inimitable French Queen Consort / Lisa Mansfield -- pt. III The Power of Creative Voices -- 7. Family Female Networking in Early Sixteenth-Century France -- The Power of Text and Image / Cynthia J. Brown -- 8. The Power of Reputation and Skills according to Anne de Graville -- The Rondeaux and the Denunciation of Slander / Mawy Bouchard -- 9. Imagination and Influence -- The Creative Powers of Marguerite de Navarre at Work at Court and in the World / Jonathan A. Reid -- 10. Power through Print -- The Works of Helisenne de Crenne / Pollie Bromilow -- pt. IV Economies of Power and Emotions -- 11. The Life and After-Life of a Royal Mistress -- Anne de Pisseleu, Duchess of Etampes / David Potter -- 12.`The King and I' -- Rhetorics of Power in the Letters of Diane de Poitiers / Susan Broomhall -- 13. Catherine de Medicis Tested by the Virtue of Charity (1533 -- 1559) -- Discourse and Metadiscourse / Denis Crouzet.

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