Research Catalog

Scandal and reputation at the court of Catherine de Medici / Una McIlvenna.

Title: Scandal and reputation at the court of Catherine de Medici / Una McIlvenna.
Author: McIlvenna, Una
Publication: Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2016.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	PQ239 .M45 2016	Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

viii, 224 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

Scandal and Reputation at the Court of Catherine de Medici explores Catherine de Medici's 'flying squadron', the legendary ladies-in-waiting of the sixteenth-century French queen mother who were alleged to have been ordered to seduce politically influential men for their mistress's own Machiavellian purposes. Branded a 'cabal of cuckoldry' by a contemporary critic, these women were involved in scandals that have encouraged a perception, which continues in much academic literature, of the late Valois court as debauched and corrupt. Rather than trying to establish the guilt or innocence of the accused, Una McIlvenna here focuses on representations of the scandals in popular culture and print, and on the collective portrayal of the women in the libelous and often pornographic literature that circulated information about the court. She traces the origins of this material to the all-male intellectual elite of the parlementaires: lawyers and magistrates who expressed their disapproval of Catherine's political and religious decisions through misogynist pamphlets and verse that targeted the women of her entourage. Scandal and Reputation at the Court of Catherine de Medici reveals accusations of poisoning and incest to be literary tropes within a tradition of female defamation dating to classical times that encouraged a collective and universalizing notion of women as sexually voracious, duplicitous and, ultimately, dangerous. In its focus on manuscript and early print culture, and on the transition from a world of orality to one dominated by literacy and textuality, this study has relevance for scholars of literary history, particularly those interested in pamphlet and libel culture.

Series Statement

Women and gender in the early modern world

Uniform Title

Women and gender in the early modern world

Subject

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History
History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

committed to retain

Contents

Introduction: Catherine de Medici and the myth of the "flying squadron" -- Court life and its critics: the rise in satirical literature -- The dissemination of scandal: news culture in early modern France -- Venomous rumours: the scandal of Isabelle de Limeuil -- Word of honour: Françoise de Rohan versus the Duke of Nemours -- The triumph of the matriarch: Anne d'Este, Duchess of Guise, Duchess of Nemours -- Conclusion: a re-assessment of scandal.

ISBN

9781472428219
1472428218
9781472428226 (canceled/invalid)
9781472428233 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

^^2015040011

OCLC

932116012
SCSB-12872089

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library