The Last Plantagenet Consorts - (Queenship and Power) by Kenneth A Loparo (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Most modern accounts of fifteenth-century queens understandably focus on separating what really happened from what was fabricated. What has not been considered in any detail, however, is the fabrications themselves as narratives, and as reflections of questions and anxieties that haunted their writers. By focusing on the relationship between gender and genre and the way embedded literary narratives echo across texts as disparate as chronicles, parliamentary proceedings, diplomatic correspondence, ballads, poetry, and drama, this study reveals hitherto unexplored tensions within these texts, generated by embedded narratives and their implications"--

Book Synopsis

Most modern accounts of fifteenth-century English queens understandably focus on separating what really happened from what was fabricated. What has not been considered in any detail, however, is the fabrications themselves as narratives, and as reflections of questions and anxieties that haunted their writers. By focusing on the relationship between gender and genre and the way embedded literary narratives echo across texts as disparate as chronicles, parliamentary proceedings, diplomatic correspondence, ballads, poetry, and drama, this study reveals hitherto unexplored tensions within these texts, generated by embedded narratives and their implications.

Review Quotes

"Finn's excellent study is one of the first of its kind to engage with early chronicle sources' complex depictions of historical royal women. Her lucid explanation of the influence of generic traditions of romance narratives and de casibus tragedy on historiography is a crucial piece of the puzzle that is the historical and literary representation of queenship, and her introduction of so many varied texts invites further investigation of this rich area of study." (Allison Machlis Meyer, English Studies, Vol. 97 (4), 2016)

"This book makes a significant contribution to the debate about defining female identity and will be of interest to, among others, scholars in English literature, drama, history, and gender studies. Utilizing a wide range of documents, Mudan Finn examines representations of the last Plantagenet consorts as a way of revealing authorial anxietiesand fears concerning these women's exercise of power." - Renaissance Quarterly

"The Last Plantagenet Consorts combines exhaustive research with a subtle and complex argument about historiography, female agency, and the power of narrative - topics that remain provocative and timely." - Journal of British Studies

About the Author

Kavita Mudan holds a doctorate in English Language and Literature from University of Oxford, Linacre College.