The Politics of Female Households: Ladies-In-Waiting Across Early Modern Europe

Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-90-04-23606-6
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 4, 316 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 244 mm, Gewicht: 802 g

Reihe: Rulers & Elites

The Politics of Female Households is the first collection that seeks to integrate ladies-in-waiting into the master narrative of early modern court studies. Presenting evidence and analysis of the multifarious ways in which ‘women above stairs’ shaped the European courts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it argues for a re-assessment of their political influence. The cultural agency of ladies-in-waiting is viewed in the reflection of portraiture, pamphlets and masques: their political dealings and patronage are revealed through analysis of letters, family networks, career patterns, gift exchange and household structures, as well as their activities in the fields of intelligence-gathering and espionage.
By concentrating on a previously neglected area of female agency, this collection demonstrates clearly that the political climate of Europe was often shaped outside the male-dominated institutions of government and administration.

Contributors include: Helen Graham-Matheson, Hannah Leah Crummé, Katrin Keller, Vanessa de Cruz, Birgit Houben, Dries Raeymaekers, Janet Ravenscroft, Una McIlvenna, Rosalind K. Marshall, Oliver Mallick, Cynthia Fry, Nadine Akkerman, Sara J. Wolfson, Fabian Persson, and Jeroen Duindam.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Akkerman, Nadine

Houben, Birgit

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Politische Führung
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Soziale Gruppen & Klassen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements, Abbreviations, List of illustrations, List of contributors

Introduction
Nadine Akkerman and Birgit Houben

PART 1. TUDOR ENGLAND

1.‘Petticoats and Politics: Elisabeth Parr and Female Agency at the Early Elizabethan Court’
Helen Graham-Matheson

2.‘Jane Dormer’s Recipe for Politics: A Refuge Household in Spain for Mary Tudor’s Ladies-in-waiting’
Hannah Leah Crummé

PART 2. HABSBURGS

I. THE IMPERIAL COURT IN VIENNA

3.‘Ladies-in-waiting at the Imperial Court of Vienna from 1550 to 1700: Structures, Responsibilities and Career Patterns’
Katrin Keller

4.‘“In service to my Lady, the Empress, as I have done every other day of my life”: Margarita of Cardona, Baroness of Dietrichstein and Lady-in-waiting of Maria of Austria’
Vanessa de Cruz

II. THE COURT IN THE SPANISH NETHERLANDS

5.‘Women and the Politics of Access at the Court of Brussels: The Infanta Isabella’s Camareras Mayores (1598-1633)’
Birgit Houben & Dries Raeymaekers

6.‘Dwarfs – and a Loca – as Ladies’ Maids at the Spanish Habsburg Courts’
Janet Ravenscroft

PART 3. FRANCE

7.‘ “A Stable of Whores”?: The “Flying Squadron” of Catherine de Medici’
Una McIlvenna

8.‘In Search of the Ladies-in-Waiting and Maids of Honour of Mary, Queen of Scots: A Prosoprographical Analysis of the Female Household’
Rosalind K. Marshall

9.‘Clients and Friends: The Ladies-in-waiting at the Court of Anne of Austria (1615-66)’
Oliver Mallick

PART 4. THE STUART COURTS

10.‘Perceptions of Influence: The Catholic Diplomacy of Queen Anna and Her Ladies, 1601-4’
Cynthia Fry

11.‘The Goddess of the Household: The Masquing Politics of Lucy Harington-Russell, Countess of Bedford’
Nadine Akkerman

12.‘The Female Bedchamber of Queen Henrietta Maria: Politics, Familial Networks and Policy, 1626-40’
Sara J. Wolfson

PART 5. THE SWEDISH COURT

13.‘Living in the House of Power: Women at the Early Modern Swedish Court’
Fabian Persson

Epilogue

‘The Politics of Female Households: Afterthoughts’
Jeroen Duindam

Bibliography

Index of Names

Über Autor(innen)

Dr Nadine Akkerman is a Postdoctoral researcher and Lecturer in Early Modern English Literature at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and an Associate of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters (CELL) in London. She is the editor of The Correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia (Oxford University Press, 3 volumes, of which the first appeared in August 2011), for which her prize-winning Ph.D. (2008) serves as the groundwork. She has been solicited to write a biography of Elizabeth.

Dr Birgit Houben received her PhD from Ghent University in 2009 and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Netherlands History (The Hague) in 2010. She specializes in the politics of access at the Spanish Habsburg courts and households, and has worked closely with the Madrilenian IULCE group (Instituto Universitario de La Corte en Europa). At the University of Antwerp she is responsible for the organisation of the research assessment exercises and the corresponding bibliometry.