Marie Antoinette; Writings on the Body of a Queen
Editorial Reviews
Review
With superb and intriguing scholarship, these essays capture the complexity of Marie-Antoinette's image from the Old Regime to the present day. The collection stands out for its readability and its insightful analysis of the representation of gender, politics, and sexuality.
-Suzanne Desan, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Marie-Antoinette: Writings on the Body of a Queen brilliantly captures the many facets of the legendary Queen. Through their analyses of correspondence, pamphlets, archives, and iconography, the authors show the complex networks of slander and passion that shaped Marie-Antoinette's fate. Ultimately, the book also provides sobering insights into the suspicions always generated by the fear of women's empowerment.
-Marie-Helene Hunt, Princeton University
Dena Goodman has assembled a terrific collection of essays on Marie-Antoinette. It brilliantly reveals how this inkblot of a queen, a mother, and a woman became so potent a symbol in the French Revolution, and has remained so since. And it shows what some of the most original historical scholars have been up to.
-Keith Michael Baker, Stanford University
Splendid....Showcases work by dix-huitièmistes in history, art history, and literary studies. The contributors, using a variety of sources and methods, analyze the figure of the dauphine/queen from many angles and, in so doing, exemplify creative scholarship in contemporary cultural history. Collectively, the authors transcend traditional petite histoire by examining texts, pictures, and incidents in detail and by speculating about the larger meanings of it all.
-H-France
Book Description
Marie-Antoinette is one of the most fascinating and controversial figures in all of French history. Married to the heir to the French throne at age fourteen, Marie-Antoinette was at the center of public attention during the final tumultuous years of the Old Regime and the French Revolution. For a variety of reasons explored in this volume - all of which revolved around her gender - Marie-Antoinette came to represent the monarchy as it came under increasing attack. As both a woman and queen, she became a privileged site of the political contestation and criticism that characterized the end of the eighteenth century in France.
Rather than retell the story of her life, the contributors to this volume reveal how crucial political and cultural contests were enacted "on the body of the queen" and on the complex identity of Marie-Antoinette. They explore the difficulties of Marie-Antoinette's position as a woman, a foreigner, and a queen in the final decades of the eighteenth century and help us to understand the waves of pornography and accusations of lesbianism, incest, and treason launched against her. Taken together, these essays suggest that it is precisely because Marie-Antoinette represented the contradictions in the social, political and gender systems of her era that, through her, we can both learn about the French past and shed new light on questions of gender, sexuality, and female power that continue to trouble us today.
Marie Antoinette; Writings on the Body of a Queen
Marie Antoinette,Dena Goodman,Routledge,0415933943,1755-1793,Biography,Europe - France,France,Gender Studies,General,History,History: World,Louis XVI, 1774-1793,Marie Antoinette,,Queen, consort of Louis XVI, K,Queen, consort of Louis XVI, King of France,,Queens,Sociology,Women's Studies - History,Biography: historical,European history: c 1750 to c 1900,History / France,Marie Antoinette,Rank & titles,Revolutions & coups,c 1700 to c 1800
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