The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 30.089 Tuesday, 5 March 2019
From: Helen M Ostovich <
Date: March 4, 2019 at 10:40:42 PM EST
Subject: BOOK NOTICE: Dancing Queen: Marie de Médicis’ Ballets at the Court of Henri IV
BOOK NOTICE: Dancing Queen: Marie de Médicis’ Ballets at the Court of Henri IV (University of Toronto Press, 2019; ISBN 978-1487503666).
Dear Shakespeareans interested in dance:
I am delighted to forward this announcement of the publication of my colleague Melinda Gough's book Dancing Queen: Marie de Médicis’ Ballets at the Court of Henri IV (University of Toronto Press, 2019; ISBN 978-1487503666).
Drawing on newly discovered primary sources as well as theories and methodologies derived from literary studies, political history, musicology, dance studies, and women’s and gender studies, Dancing Queen traces how Queen Marie de Médicis’ ballets authorized her incipient political authority through innovative verbal and visual imagery, avant-garde musical developments, and ceremonial arrangements of objects and bodies in space. Making use of women’s “semi-official” status as political agents, Marie’s ballets also manipulated the subtle social and cultural codes of international courtly society in order to more deftly navigate rivalries and alliances both at home and abroad. At times the queen’s productions could challenge Henri IV’s immediate interests, contesting the influence enjoyed by his mistresses or giving space to implied critiques of official foreign policy, for example. Such defenses of Marie’s own position, though, took shape as part of a larger governmental program designed to promote the French consort queen’s political authority not in its own right but as a means of maintaining power for the new Bourbon monarchy in the event of Henri IV’s untimely death.
For more information, or to order the book, please click here.
Dr H M Ostovich <
Founding Editor, Early Theatre <http://earlytheatre.org/>
Professor Emerita, English and Cultural Studies
McMaster University