The construction of queenship in the illustrated "Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei"

• Autores: Jill Hamilton Clements
• Localización: Gesta, ISSN 0016-920X, Vol. 52, Nº. 1, 2013, págs. 21-42
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Completed about 1250, the version of La Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei preserved in Cambridge University Library MS Ee.3.59 is the only known illustrated Anglo-Norman life of St. Edward, the last Anglo-Saxon king from the House of Wessex. The Cambridge manuscript was likely copied from the now-lost presentation copy made by Matthew Paris that was given to Eleanor of Provence following her marriage to King Henry III of England in 1236. Because the original was created amid Henry’s growing devotion to his saint-king ancestor and his renovation of Edward’s church at Westminster, much of the scholarship on the Estoire has centered on Henry’s religious and political inclinations. This focus has emerged despite the poem’s explicit dedication to Eleanor of Provence, which the Cambridge manuscript retains. The present study aims to reorient research on this manuscript by considering how the epithalamium introduces Eleanor as a reader of the Estoire and thus presents thirteenth-century English queenship through the eleventh-century figures of Emma, Gunnilda, and Edith. Although Eleanor may never have possessed the Cambridge manuscript, its text and illustrations can be understood as speaking directly to her, thereby shaping the image of English queens for contemporary readers. Because similar saints’ lives circulated among the English aristocracy, it is critical to our understanding of the Cambridge manuscript to explore how this undercurrent of queenship in the Estoire would have been received by a potentially broad audience. Read in this way, the Estoire becomes a compilation of text and image that places Eleanor of Provence both alongside these readers and in a succession of virtuous royal women in the life of St. Edward.