Perceiving Power in Early Modern Europe

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. 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.

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.

Introduction.- "Live like a King"-Monument of Philopappus and the Continuity of Client-King.- Dreams of Kings in the Liber Thesauri Occulti of Pascalis Romanus.- The Jewel for the Crown: Reconsidering Female Kingship and Queenship in the Galfridian Historiography.- King Arthur: Leadership Masculinity and Homosocial Manhood.- Innocent and Simple: The Making of Henry VI's Kingship in Fifteenth Century England.- Mending People's Broken Hearts: the Fashioning of Rulership in John Ford's The Broken Heart.- Henrietta Maria as a Mediatrix of French Court Culture: A Reconsideration of the Decorations in the Queen's House.- Royalty and Divinity in Katherine Philips's Poems.- Private and Public: Rulers, Kings and Tyrants in Plato, Aristotle, John of Salisbury, Shakespeare and His Contemporaries.- Tobias Smollett's Literary Redefinition of Kingship for the Eighteenth Century.