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From She-Wolf to Martyr: The Reign and Disputed Reputation of Johanna I of Naples
Elizabeth Casteen
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Description for From She-Wolf to Martyr: The Reign and Disputed Reputation of Johanna I of Naples
Hardback. Num Pages: 312 pages, 11, 7 black & white halftones, 2 diagrames, 2 maps. BIC Classification: 1DST; 3H; BGH; BGR; HBJD; HBLC1. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 235 x 156 x 23. Weight in Grams: 599.
In 1343 a seventeen-year-old girl named Johanna (1326-1382) ascended the Neapolitan throne, becoming the ruling monarch of one of medieval Europe's most important polities. For nearly forty years, she held her throne and the avid attention of her contemporaries. Their varied responses to her reign created a reputation that made Johanna the most notorious woman in Europe during her lifetime. In From She-Wolf to Martyr, Elizabeth Casteen examines Johanna's evolving, problematic reputation and uses it as a lens through which to analyze often-contradictory late-medieval conceptions of rulership, authority, and femininity.When Johanna inherited the Neapolitan throne from her grandfather, many questioned both her right to and her suitability for her throne. After the murder of her first husband, Johanna quickly became infamous as a she-wolf-a violent, predatory, sexually licentious woman. Yet, she also eventually gained fame as a wise, pious, and able queen. Contemporaries-including Francesco Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Birgitta of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena-were fascinated by Johanna. Drawing on a wide range of textual and visual sources, Casteen reconstructs the fourteenth-century conversation about Johanna and tracks the role she played in her time's cultural imaginary. She argues that despite Johanna's modern reputation for indolence and incompetence, she crafted a new model of female sovereignty that many of her contemporaries accepted and even lauded.
Product Details
Publisher
Cornell University Press
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2015
Condition
New
Weight
599g
Number of Pages
312
Place of Publication
Ithaca, United States
ISBN
9780801453861
SKU
V9780801453861
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-99
About Elizabeth Casteen
Elizabeth Casteen is Assistant Professor of History at Binghamton University-The State University of New York.
Reviews for From She-Wolf to Martyr: The Reign and Disputed Reputation of Johanna I of Naples
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 notorious 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
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 notorious 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