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Palgrave Macmillan

Perceiving Power in Early Modern Europe

  • Book
  • © 2016

Overview

Editors:
  1. Francis K.H. So

    1. Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

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  • Offers an interdisciplinary and transnational examination of rulership from the antiquity to modern times.
  • Considers the behavioral patterns of kings and queens in early ages, spanning from the classical period to the eighteenth century.
  • Discusses forms of kingship such as client-kingship, monarchy, queen consort and regnant queenship.

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Table of contents (11 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
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  2. Introduction

    • Francis K. H. So
    Pages 1-24

  3. “Live Like a King”: The Monument of Philopappus and the Continuity of Client-Kingship

    • Ching-Yuan Wu
    Pages 25-47

  4. Dreams of Kings in the Liber Thesauri Occulti of Pascalis Romanus

    • Lola Sharon Davidson
    Pages 49-68

  5. The Jewel for the Crown: Reconsidering Female Kingship and Queenship in the Galfridian Historiography

    • Sophia Yashih Liu
    Pages 69-84

  6. King Arthur: Leadership Masculinity and Homosocial Manhood

    • Ying-hsiu Lu
    Pages 85-101

  7. Innocent and Simple: The Making of Henry VI’s Kingship in Fifteenth-Century England

    • Chiu-Yen Lin
    Pages 103-120

  8. Mending People’s Broken Hearts: The Fashioning of Rulership in John Ford’s The Broken Heart

    • Ming-hsiu Chen
    Pages 121-139

  9. Henrietta Maria as a Mediatrix of French Court Culture: A Reconsideration of the Decorations in the Queen’s House

    • Grace Y. S. Cheng
    Pages 141-165

  10. Royalism and Divinity in Katherine Philips’s Poems

    • Hui-Chu Yu
    Pages 167-185

  11. Private and Public: Rulers, Kings, and Tyrants in Plato, Aristotle, John of Salisbury, and Shakespeare and his Contemporaries

    • Jonathan Hart
    Pages 187-206

  12. Tobias Smollett’s Literary Redefinition of Kingship for the Eighteenth Century

    • Simon White
    Pages 207-225

  13. Back Matter

    Pages 227-237
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Keywords

About this book

This collection conceptualizes the question of rulership in past centuries, incorporating such diverse disciplines as archaeology, art history, history, literature and psychoanalysis to illustrate how kings and queens ruled in Europe from the antiquity to early modern times. It discusses forms of kingship such as client-kingship, monarchy, queen consort and regnant queenship that manifest gubernatorial power in concert with paternal succession and the divine right of the king. While the king assumes a religious dimension in his obligatory functions, justice and peace are vital elements to maintain his sovereignty. In sum, the active side of governmental power is to keep peace and order leading to prosperity for the subjects; the passive side of power is to protect the subjects from external attack and free them from fear. These concepts of power find concurrence in modern times as well as in non-European cultures. Through a truly cross-cultural, transnational, multidimensional, gender-conscious and interdisciplinary study, this collection offers a cutting edge account of how power has been exercised and demonstrated in various cultures of some bygone eras.

Reviews

“This collection stands out for its varied range of topics, multifaceted approaches,  diversified perspectives and a thoughtful dialogical introduction that widens the purview of the medieval West. It is immensely exciting and rewarding to see the fruits of an international collaboration with uniquely important and substantial contributions by East Asian scholars to one of the major themes in medieval and early modern studies.” (Yu-cheng Lee, Distinguished Research Fellow, Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica)

“Perceiving Power in Early Modern Europe is an eclectic collection of essays that together traces the evolution of absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy. The essays bring out an array of the axes and valences of power ... . Professor Francis K. H. So’s informative and sure-footed introduction not only places the discrete essays in a provocativedialogical context but also present analogous Chinese notions of kingship such as the Mandate of Heaven and Wang Dao—notions that parallel the divine rights of kings / the Magna Carta and noblesse oblige respectively.” (King-Kok Cheung, Professor of English, University of California, Los Angeles)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

    Francis K.H. So

About the editor

Francis So is chair professor of English at Kaohsiung Medical University. He has taught and served as administrator at National Sun Yat-sen University and Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages. He has published works on medieval and Renaissance English literature, Chinese-Western comparative literature and cultural contacts along the Silk Road.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Perceiving Power in Early Modern Europe

  • Editors: Francis K.H. So

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58381-9

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-58624-7Published: 17 October 2016

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-93084-5Published: 27 March 2021

  • eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-58381-9Published: 05 October 2016

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: IX, 237

  • Number of Illustrations: 2 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: History of Early Modern Europe, Political History

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