AMAD
"Archivum Medii Aevi Digitale - Specialized open access repository for research in the middle ages"To submission
| Title: | The Politics of Death: Monarchy and Mortality in Late Medieval England, 1399-1413. |
| Contributor: | The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives |
| Author: | Ciara Marie Shevlin |
| Description: | This essay will consider the social, cultural and political ramifications of the untimely or unexpected death of a monarch. Recent history has shown that the death of a member of royalty can cause significant social action. The death of Princess Diana caused mass public grief; many people deemed ‘pilgrims ’ by the press flocked to the shrine at Althorp. Furthermore, a decade after the incident numerous news reports and articles continue to discuss the subject with no definitive narrative to the cause of the events having been found satisfactory. This paper will focus primarily on the mysterious death/murder of Richard II and how such an event had an equal, if not greater, effect upon the royal subjects of the late medieval period. The essay is framed by three chapters. The first entitled ‘The King’s Body ’ provides an introduction to the philosophic position of the King’s material and symbolic body as a basis for the further investigation of the political potential of the King’s corpse. The second section of the essay, ‘The Anxiety of Remembrance’, investigates the problems that arise when dealing with historiographical accounts of royal deaths. Rather than attempting to present a definitive narrative this essay is concerned with defending the value of variety as a means of accessing the diversity of cultural articulations of grief. Finally ‘The Unquiet Dead ’ discusses the process where-by the dead monarch came to haunt the reign of his usurper Henry IV. By analysing conspiratorial claims and considering current critical theory about the birth of conspiracy this essay will propose that the unexpected death of the king created complex, complicated and moreover extremely sophisticated responses. |
| URI: | https://www.amad.org/jspui/handle/123456789/76984 |
| Other Identifier: | http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ptb/mso/dd/dd5/shevlin paper.pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.580.5806 |
| AMAD ID: | 568333 |
| Appears in Collections: | BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine) General history of Europe |
