Dancing Queen

Through meticulous, wide-ranging interdisciplinary research, Melinda Gough builds a compelling case in the five chapters of this book that Marie de Médicis used ‘the immediacy of embodied, live performance’ to advance both her own status as queen consort of France and the interests of the French monarchy in the fraught political period of the early 1600s. Gough allies her approach with that of the ‘neo-ceremonialist school’ of French political history, arguing that by studying the time-and-space-based medium of court spectacle scholars can discern complex strategies of courtly self-assertion, targeted diplomacy and public messaging not available through means less fully present in the physical world. For Marie de Médicis, in Gough’s persuasive reading, the performative opportunities presented by the court ballet were particularly useful, given her paradoxical status as both sovereign of the state and subject of her own husband the king. By staging spectacles in which she herself danced principal

Ancient history · Art · Biology · Queen (butterfly · Zoology · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · History