Embodied Court in the Premodern World: Understanding the Physicality, Performativity and Lifecycle of Bodies at Court in Europe and Beyond, 1400-1800

Hardback, Pages: 275, Size:178 x 254 mm, Illustrations:8 b/w, 15 col., 1 tables b/w., Language: English. ISBN 9782503616087. Summary The study of bodies and their various functions, including emotions, sexualities, and health has become a key area of scholarship in recent years, though has until now remained peripheral to court studies. This interdisciplinary volume of essays represents an important intensification of focus, picking up the increased attention paid to the individual bodies that made up premodern royal and princely courts. It focuses on the ways in which the courtly environment shaped the corporal experiences of everyone involved. Contributors address the physicality of the court in four key categories from across the lifecycle: bodily experiences, identity and emotions; performativity, gendered bodies, and sexuality; health, sickness and disabled bodies, and corpses, the politics of death and memory. These common experiences were not one-size-fits-all, but took on particular political, social, and cultural consequence in the charged atmosphere of the court, which they in turn helped define. This volume therefore offers a new approach to royal and court studies, from a broad chronological and geographical perspective, which will open new lines of research on the physicality of courtly environments and the corporeality of power. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Janet Dickinson Gender, Expectations, Reputations Architecture, Gender, and the Private Sphere. Women and Early Modern Court Residences around 1700 Barbara Arciszewska Embodied Manifestations of Queenship and Bodily Experiences of Swedish Queens in the Vasa Period Anu Lahtinen, Pihla Pekonen Beyond the Realm of the Haram. The Case of the Mughal Administrator Itimad Khan Khwajasara Shreejita Basak Identity, Performance, Ideals 'You have poisoned the most beautiful day of my life'. A Drama at the Swedish Court, 1775-1784 Merit Laine Horns and Helms. Gendered Borders, Visibility and Vulnerability of the Medieval Body Clémentine Girault Gendering the Royal Body. Fashion, Sexuality, and Scandal in the Castilian Court at the End of the Middle Ages Diana Lucía Gomez-Chacon The Performance of Power Relations. Early Henrician Courtly Dance Kristen Vitale Engel Sickness and its Treatment Royalty and Disability. Strategies for Coping and Concealment at Early Modern Courts Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly The Spectacle of the Abject. King Louis XIII's Suffering Body in the Spring of 1643 Marie-Claude Canova-Green Physicians, Barber Surgeons, Midwives, Herbalists and Traditional Healers. Medicine at Women's Courts in the 18th-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Bo?ena Popio?ek, Anna Penka?a?Jastrz?bska Death and Memory The Three Burials of Gaston de Foix. Corpses and Courts, Milan 1512-2024 Philippa Woodcock 'The riddle of the world is dead'. Murder, Memory, and the Duke of Buckingham's Body Megan Shaw I'm Still Here. The Stubborn Presence of Royal Bodies after Death Fabian Persson 0 g.…