THE BODY OF THE QUEEN

This book is a welcomecontribution 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 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 Kings Two Bodies On the basis of both textual selfpresentations and visual representations a gradual transformation of the queen appears A sacredprovidential figure in medieval and early modern period an ideal bourgeois wife during the late18th and 19th Centuries and a starlike re presentation of royalty during the past century Twentiethcentury 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 Regina Schultes 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 HistoryGender History at the RuhrUniversitat Bochum