When Women Ruled the World: Making the Renaissance in Europe - Hardcover

Quilligan, Maureen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1631497960 ISBN 13: 9781631497964

Publisher: Liveright, 2021

Synopsis

In this game-changing revisionist history, a leading scholar of the Renaissance shows how four powerful women redefined the culture of European monarchy in the glorious sixteenth century.

The sixteenth century in Europe was a time of chronic destabilization in which institutions of traditional authority were challenged and religious wars seemed unending. Yet it also witnessed the remarkable flowering of a pacifist culture, cultivated by a cohort of extraordinary women rulers―most notably, Mary Tudor; Elizabeth I; Mary, Queen of Scots; and Catherine de’ Medici―whose lives were intertwined not only by blood and marriage, but by a shared recognition that their premier places in the world of just a few dozen European monarchs required them to bond together, as women, against the forces seeking to destroy them, if not the foundations of monarchy itself.

Recasting the complex relationships among these four queens, Maureen Quilligan, a leading scholar of the Renaissance, rewrites centuries of historical analysis that sought to depict their governments as riven by personal jealousies and petty revenges. Instead, When Women Ruled the World shows how these regents carefully engendered a culture of mutual respect, focusing on the gift-giving by which they aimed to ensure ties of friendship and alliance. As Quilligan demonstrates, gifts were no mere signals of affection, but inalienable possessions, often handed down through generations, that served as agents in the creation of a steep social hierarchy that allowed women to assume political authority beyond the confines of their gender.

“With brilliant panache” (Amanda Foreman), Quilligan reveals how eleven-year-old Elizabeth I’s gift of a handmade book to her stepmother, Katherine Parr, helped facilitate peace within the tumultuous Tudor dynasty, and how Catherine de’ Medici’s gift of the Valois tapestries to her granddaughter, the soon-to-be Grand Duchess of Tuscany, both solidified and enhanced the Medici family’s prestige. Quilligan even uncovers a book of poetry given to Elizabeth I by Catherine de’ Medici as a warning against the concerted attack launched by her closest counselor, William Cecil, on the divine right of kings―an attack that ultimately resulted in the execution of her sister, Mary, Queen of Scots.

Beyond gifts, When Women Ruled the World delves into the connections the regents created among themselves, connections that historians have long considered beneath notice. “Like fellow soldiers in a sororal troop,” Quilligan writes, these women protected and aided each other. Aware of the leveling patriarchal power of the Reformation, they consolidated forces, governing as “sisters” within a royal family that exercised power by virtue of inherited right―the very right that Protestantism rejected as a basis for rule.

Vibrantly chronicling the artistic creativity and political ingenuity that flourished in the pockets of peace created by these four queens, Quilligan’s lavishly illustrated work offers a new perspective on the glorious sixteenth century and, crucially, the women who helped create it.

70 black-and-white images

About this title

About the Author

Maureen Quilliganis R. Florence Brinkley Distinguished Professor Emerita of English at Duke University. The author of books about medieval and Renaissance literature, she was also coeditor of the groundbreaking essay collection Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe.

From the Back Cover

“[An] extraordinary narrative that sweeps away centuries of historical bias. . . . Anyone with an interest in Renaissance culture will want to read this revelatory book, not least for its relevance to the present.”
―Margreta de Grazia

“When Women Ruled the World is more than just biography, it’s a survival guide for the modern woman. Once you realize what these queens went through to stay in power, you’ll never again doubt that women can achieve anything. Behind every great woman, as Maureen Quilligan shows . . . is her own sheer persistence.”
―Amanda Foreman, author of The Duchess

“When Women Ruled the World is a rare delight, offering a vivid and intimate account―a page-turner!―revealing the lives, loves, betrayals, and murders that linked Mary Tudor; Mary, Queen of Scots; Elizabeth I; and Catherine de’ Medici. . . . Drawing upon a wealth of royal archives, Maureen Quilligan tells a story more fascinating than fiction.”
―Elaine Pagels, author of Beyond Belief

“An imaginative retelling of the lives of the queens who in the later sixteenth century ruled France, England, and Scotland. Through their gifts of embroidery, jewels, and poetry, Maureen Quilligan brings to life the gestures of sisterhood between women too often assumed simply to be rivals.”
―Catherine Fletcher, author of The Black Prince of Florence and The Divorce of Henry VIII

“Maureen Quilligan carefully documents―and beautifully illustrates―the fascinating careers of four sixteenth-century European queens. She highlights their strategic gift-giving and professions of mutual affection, as well as their suspicions and rivalries, competition and collaboration.”
―Nannerl O. Keohane, former president of Wellesley College and Duke University

“In this lively and engaging book, Maureen Quilligan invites us to reflect upon four sixteenth-century women rulers. . . . This ambitious study takes a deeply creative turn by focusing on the gifts exchanged between these women―objects that knit them together through gestures of generosity and affection. While copious illustrations permit us to see the precious books, embroideries, and jewels in question, Quilligan’s vivid analyses enable us to read them. We grasp how effectively the gifting of royal ‘things’ could foster important―and even improbable―Renaissance alliances.”
―Nancy Vickers, former president of Bryn Mawr College

“When Women Ruled the World makes us see power-brokering in sixteenth-century Europe entirely anew. Written with wit and verve, this book . . . forces us to confront our willingness to accept cartoonish and simplistic accounts of female power, a problem that remains with us today.”
―Wendy Wall, author of Staging Domesticity

Edition details

• Publisher: Liveright
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1631497960
• ISBN 13: 9781631497964
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320