Casteen's book... is now the best available introduction to Johanna's life and reign, and the first, much-needed, serious study of late medieval queenship in southern Italy.
American Historical Review
Virtuous ruler, loving mother, and martyr: these terms are seldom heard in relation to Johanna I, queen of Naples. On the contrary, when the memory of the ... Read morenotorious fourteenth-century queen is invoked, murderer, harlot, and schismatic are just a few of the choice epithets far more likely to spring to mind. It is one of the great virtues of Elizabeth Casteen's fine new book that it reveals a more nuanced portrait of the Angevin queen. From the moment that Johanna-a woman!-inherited the Kingdom of Naples from her grandfather, she became the talk of Europe, on the lips of everyone from Boccaccio to Birgitta of Sweden. Such talk or fama is the subject of Casteen's admirable book, which seeks first to deconstruct it through a careful study of the political and religious contexts in which it emerged, and then by shining the bright light of gender analysis on it, which reveals a far more complicated-if still controversial-queen.
Katherine L. Jansen, Catholic University of America, author of The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages In From She-Wolf to Martyr, Elizabeth Casteen provides a very important and useful contribution not only to Italian history and Neapolitan studies but also to the current lively discussion of queenship and female agency in the Middle Ages.
Ronald G. Musto, publisher, Italica Press, author of Medieval Naples: A Documentary History, 400-1400 Through a careful analysis of extensive archival, manuscript, and secondary sources, Casteen (Binghamton Univ.-SUNY) makes an intriguing contribution to recent scholarly discussions of medieval queenship, the creation of reputations, 'cultural imaginary,'and the reliability of narrative sources. The author traces Johanna I of Naples's shifting public image throughout her reign as she was lambasted by her enemies, marginalized by one husband, criticized by female saints, and lauded by her allies, an image always cast in gendered terms.
J. M. Pope
Choice
This is an extremely well-conceived book about the long and complex life and reign of Johanna of Naples. It is meticulously researched, and Elizabeth Casteen skillfully handles an impressive range of primary sources, some archival and some published.
Theresa Earenfight, Seattle University
The King's Other Body: Maria of Castile and the Crown of Aragon
Perhaps the book's most valuable contribution is in its sensitive handling of medieval preconceptions about femininity, Johanna's opponents made abundant use of negative tropes about women-their irrationality, their lust, their physical and moral weakness-to discredit her claim to authority. But Casteen also explores how Johanna and her partisans manipulated more positive constructions of femininity-such as piety, humility, and obedience-as a means to promote her power while seeming, rhetorically, to limit it.... The book concludes by contrasting Johanna's posthumous reputation in Naples as a she-wolf (to use Boccaccio's term) with her legacy in Provence, another part of her domains, where she was remembered as a pious, almost saintly, maternal figure. It is a testament to Casteen's thorough and evenhanded scholarship that the reader is left not only convinced of the equal legitimacy of these two depictions but also unsurprised by their coexistence.
The Catholic Historical Review
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