Staging the Ruler's Body in Medieval Cultures (Hardcover)

Hardcover. This book explores the viewing and sensorial contexts in which the bodies of kings and queens were involved in the premodern societies of Europe, Asia, and Africa, relying on a methodology that aims to overcoming the traditional boundaries between material studies, art history, political theory, and Reprasentationsgeschichte. More specifically, it investigates the multiple ways in which the ruler's physical appearance was apprehended and invested with visual, metaphorical, and emotional associations, as well as the dynamics whereby such mise-en-scene devices either were inspired by or worked as sources of inspiration for textual and pictorial representations of royalty. The outcome is a multifaced analysis of the multiple, imaginative, and terribly ambiguous ways in which, in past societies, the notion of a God-driven, eternal, and transpersonal royal power came to be associated with the material bodies of kings and queens, and of the impressive efforts made, in different cultures, to elude the conundrum of the latter's weakness, transitoriness, and individual distinctiveness. The fifteen studies gathered in the book reflect on the mise-en-scene and representational devices of medieval rulers' bodily appearances in Angevin, Aragonese, Armenian, Byzantine, Carolingian, English, Ethiopian, Georgian, Leonese, Sasanian and Sienese traditions. Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.…