Portraits of the Queen Mother: Polemics, Panegyrics, Letters

Winner of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women's 2015 Josephine Roberts Award for a Scholarly Edition published in 2014

Catherine de Médicis was portrayed in her day as foreign usurper, loving queen and queen mother, patron of the arts, and Machiavellian murderer of Protestants. Leah L. Chang and Katherine Kong assemble a diverse array of scathing polemic and loft praise, diplomatic reports, and Catherine’s own letters, which together show how one extraordinary woman’s rule intersected with early modern conceptions of gender, maternity, and power.

"Bringing together differing, even conflicting, writings about Catherine de Médicis in her century is a very timely project. It will allow students and faculty alike to appreciate how posterity’s view of a historical person emerges and evolves, and how it is constructed by sympathetic or hostile reporters. The editors not only present Catherine and the Wars of Religion in their historical context, but also examine the fascinating problem of her afterlife in popular literature as well as serious scholarship."

-Mary B. McKinley, Douglas Huntly Gordon Professor of French, University of Virginia

LEAH L. CHANG is Associate Professor of French at The George Washington University in Washington, DC. She is the author of Into Print: The Production of Female Authorship in Early Modern France (2009).

KATHERINE KONG is an independent scholar and former Associate Professor of French at the University of Tennessee. She is the author of Lettering the Self in Medieval and Early Modern France (2010).

REVIEWS
Parergon 32.2 (2015): 278–280. Reviewed by Susan Broomhall.
Renaissance Quarterly 68.4 (2015): 1399–1400. Reviewed by Tracy Adams.