Using historical evidence provided by contemporary representations of Western queens and empresses, this text explores the theme of women, power and politics in the earlier Middle Ages. During the period between circa 972 and 1060, visual representations were employed on a scale unprecedented in the medieval West. Despite the individual audiences, meanings and functions of these images, nearly all of the extant representations share a common iconographic feature: they depict the queen or empress in the company of other members of the royal/imperial family, usually husbands or sons. These images would appear to have served purposes integrally linked to the immediate political, religious or familial contexts of their creation. Some were intended as personal expressions of family-centred piety; the majority, however, are concerned with the representation of dynastic legitimacy, and employ the figure of the queen or empress in connection with the articulation of royal or imperial ideologies.
The visual evidence from this period not only supplements the written sources, but also preserves a wide range of contemporary perspectives on the role of queen or empress, and the power which she was perceived to exercise.
- ISBN10 0718501136
- ISBN13 9780718501136
- Publish Date 31 July 2002
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Out of Print 10 November 2004
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Imprint Leicester University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 192
- Language English