In the medieval period, the monarch was seen as the embodiment of the community of his kingdom, the body politic. And while we've long since shed that view, it nonetheless continues to influence our understanding of contemporary politics. This book offers thirteen case studies from premodern and contemporary Europe that demonstrate the process through which political corporations-bodies politic-were and continue to be constructed and challenged. Drawing on history, archaeology, literary criticism, and art history, the contributors survey a wide geographical and chronological spectrum to offer a panoramic view of these dynamic political entities.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgement
- Introduction
- Paweł Figurski, Karolina Mroziewicz, and Aleksander Sroczyński
- Part 1. Premodern Rulership
- Assembly Politics and Conflicting Discourses in Early Medieval León (10th-11th c.)
- The Supreme Power of the Armour and the Veneration of the Emperor’s Body in Twelfth-Century Byzantium
- The Exultet of Bolesław II of Mazovia and the Sacralisation of Political Power in the High Middle Ages
- ‘International’ Christian Society and Its Political Theology in Thirteenth-Century Latin Christendom
- The King’s Immature Body
- Representations of Child Coronations in Poland, Hungary and Bohemia (1382-1530)
- We Were the Trojans
- Rhetoric and Political Community in Medieval and Early Modern Sarmatia and Illyria
- The Life and Afterlife of Pontifical Indiscretions in the Renaissance
- The Queen’s Two Faces
- The Portraiture of Elizabeth I of England
- Part 2. Contemporary Political Power
- Blood, Honour and the Norm
- Race Defilement and the Boundaries of Community in Hungary, 1941
- Dual Approaches to Communist Engagement
- Helena Krajewska and Marek Włodarski
- The Supermen’s Two Bodies
- The Body, the Costume, and the Legitimacy of Power in the DC Universe Narratives
- And Then They Were Bodies
- Medieval Royalties, from DNA Analysis to a Nation’s Identity
- List of Figures
- General Bibliography
- Index