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Inventing Eleanor: The Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine
Eleanor of Aquitaine (1124-1204), queen of France and England and mother of two kings, has often been described as one of the most remarkable women of the Middle Ages. Yet her real achievements have been embellished--and even obscured--by myths that have grown up over eight centuries. This process began in her own lifetime, as chroniclers reported rumours of her scandalous conduct on crusade, and has continued ever since. She has been variously viewed as an adulterous queen, a monstrous mother and a jealous murderess, but also as a patron of literature, champion of courtly love and proto-feminist defender of women's rights. Inventing Eleanor interrogates the myths that have grown up around the figure of Eleanor of Aquitaine and investigates how and why historians and artists have invented an Eleanor who is very different from the 12th-century queen. The book first considers the medieval primary sources and then proceeds to trace the post-medieval development of the image of Eleanor, from demonic queen to feminist icon, in historiography and the broader culture.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 11, 2024
Enlightening, but very academic in tone (quite dry!) I was only interested in the "myth" of Eleanor and how they grew / changes over the ages so I was most interested in the first 3 chapters.
Intro: This was quite interesting and could have been a chapter. Discusses that while contemporary audience thinks Eleanor was exceptional, actually many queens of her age acted similarly (regent, peacemaker, soft skills, power alongside the throne.) Look at Matilda of Flanders, King Stephen's wife Matilda, or Eleanor's granddaughter Berenguela of Castile!
The idea of Eleanor's exceptionalism rests on an assumption that women of her age were powerless. On the contrary, in Western Europe before the 12th century there were no really effective barrier to the capacity of women to exercise power: they appear as military leaders, judges, castellans, controls of property.
Chapter 1: How the "black legend" took hold. Traces origins of her sexual infamy to it's medieval sources (or in some cases seems to be made up in Victorian Times IE the supposed murder of Fair Rosamond.) Takes centuries to fully evolve.
... the true significance of the scandal is what it reveals about the manner in which a fascinated fear of female sexuality readily surfaced when male warrior were casting around for scapegoats.
The rumours may have had a common root ..: namely, disapproving clerics attributing sexual motives for a woman's political actions.
Fair Rosamond's story had therefore developed a long way from the first chronicle references; Rosamond had evolved from a whore to wronged heroine. This may reflect the increasing negative reputation of Eleanor through the 13th century: the demonic queen was now capable of increasingly evil actions.
Chapter 2: highlights the historians who arguably have been most responsible for the myth making, so that Elenore has been taken so far from what medieval chronicles and charters say about her.
The problems in establishing an objective, realistic image of Eleanor reflect her position at the intersection of questions of ideology, gender, nationalism and academic versus popular history.
John Carmi Parsons has argued persuasively for the parallels between the accusations made against Eleanor and those against Marie Antoinette, including incest and adultery.
Chapter 3 is about regional historiographies [Basically since she was from Aquitaine, married the French King then an English one Eleanor had no where to call home and everyone attacked her for being "other".]
[this is where I started skimming] Chapters 4 and 5 address her portrayal in 'modern media" - plays, stage media [The Lion in Winter!] Ch 6 is about fiction, Ch 7 is about visual arts.
Intro: This was quite interesting and could have been a chapter. Discusses that while contemporary audience thinks Eleanor was exceptional, actually many queens of her age acted similarly (regent, peacemaker, soft skills, power alongside the throne.) Look at Matilda of Flanders, King Stephen's wife Matilda, or Eleanor's granddaughter Berenguela of Castile!
The idea of Eleanor's exceptionalism rests on an assumption that women of her age were powerless. On the contrary, in Western Europe before the 12th century there were no really effective barrier to the capacity of women to exercise power: they appear as military leaders, judges, castellans, controls of property.
Chapter 1: How the "black legend" took hold. Traces origins of her sexual infamy to it's medieval sources (or in some cases seems to be made up in Victorian Times IE the supposed murder of Fair Rosamond.) Takes centuries to fully evolve.
... the true significance of the scandal is what it reveals about the manner in which a fascinated fear of female sexuality readily surfaced when male warrior were casting around for scapegoats.
The rumours may have had a common root ..: namely, disapproving clerics attributing sexual motives for a woman's political actions.
Fair Rosamond's story had therefore developed a long way from the first chronicle references; Rosamond had evolved from a whore to wronged heroine. This may reflect the increasing negative reputation of Eleanor through the 13th century: the demonic queen was now capable of increasingly evil actions.
Chapter 2: highlights the historians who arguably have been most responsible for the myth making, so that Elenore has been taken so far from what medieval chronicles and charters say about her.
The problems in establishing an objective, realistic image of Eleanor reflect her position at the intersection of questions of ideology, gender, nationalism and academic versus popular history.
John Carmi Parsons has argued persuasively for the parallels between the accusations made against Eleanor and those against Marie Antoinette, including incest and adultery.
Chapter 3 is about regional historiographies [Basically since she was from Aquitaine, married the French King then an English one Eleanor had no where to call home and everyone attacked her for being "other".]
[this is where I started skimming] Chapters 4 and 5 address her portrayal in 'modern media" - plays, stage media [The Lion in Winter!] Ch 6 is about fiction, Ch 7 is about visual arts.
March 30, 2015
An excellent summary of all the myths about Eleanor. Cuts through all the romantic BS that's been written about her and uses contemporary sources to show that sometimes what we think we know about her is not true at all.
April 14, 2021
This is a super interesting book, and one of the few I could find about Eleanor of Aquitaine which focused on the mythology and scandals that encompass her. It does assume you have a basic understanding of Eleanor's life and various important events, but if you have that it makes for a fascinating read which elucidates much about her life and legacy.
May 16, 2019
Eleanor of Aquitaine is the most famous woman of the Middle Ages. She was wife, mother and grandmother of kings and a rich heiress in her own right, inheriting the duchy of Aquitaine upon her father's death when she was but a teenager. Powerful, independent, rebellious, beautiful - she is often described with such words. And yet in his book Michael R. Evans shows that most of what we know about Eleanor is invented either by hostile chroniclers or by subsequent generations of authors and historians. Most of what we "know" (or think we know) about her hinges on the idea that women of the 12th century were not powerful and couldn't wield much power.
This book encourages readers to ask themselves a question - what do we really know about Eleanor? Is everything written about her in historical texts true?
Well, most of what we know about her isn't. We are often told that she was beautiful, for instance, or that she had red hair and green eyes. Well, that's all invented as there's no single source detailing Eleanor's appearance. Even the famous fresco in Sainte-Radegonde chapel at Chinon, reproduced on the covers of Eleanor's biographies, isn't Eleanor.
There's so many myths surrounding Eleanor. Her appearance, morality, marriages and motives were hotly debated by chroniclers and historians over the centuries, and everyone added their biases and agendas in the process, creating a compelling mythical creature called "Eleanor of Aquitaine". Michael R. Evans's book is a brilliant study in making of a myth. I loved every single page because the book answered all of my questions about Eleanor. Highly recommended.
This book encourages readers to ask themselves a question - what do we really know about Eleanor? Is everything written about her in historical texts true?
Well, most of what we know about her isn't. We are often told that she was beautiful, for instance, or that she had red hair and green eyes. Well, that's all invented as there's no single source detailing Eleanor's appearance. Even the famous fresco in Sainte-Radegonde chapel at Chinon, reproduced on the covers of Eleanor's biographies, isn't Eleanor.
There's so many myths surrounding Eleanor. Her appearance, morality, marriages and motives were hotly debated by chroniclers and historians over the centuries, and everyone added their biases and agendas in the process, creating a compelling mythical creature called "Eleanor of Aquitaine". Michael R. Evans's book is a brilliant study in making of a myth. I loved every single page because the book answered all of my questions about Eleanor. Highly recommended.
August 21, 2021
I love "The Lion in Winter." I love Sharon Kay Penman's Angevin series. Those are the main "sources" that have formed my understanding of Eleanor of Aquitaine's character and historical significance. When I picked up Evans' "Inventing Eleanor," I was most excited to read his analyses of those two stories. I wound up being most interested in the earlier two chapters, in which he talks about Eleanor amongst her contemporaries and then goes through the origin and development of the major myths about her life. I liked when he argued that Eleanor wasn't really so exceptional in her own times-- she wasn't the only woman out there who exercised power and was politically and culturally significant. I find the "not like other girls" approach to any historical woman pretty tired to say the least, so this chapter was a breath of fresh air.
I also love the book's title. Because Evans is right. We're always reinventing Eleanor as times change. Because as times change, what Eleanor *means* to us changes too. And that's because *we* change. And then we want different things than our ancestors did. So we approach history differently, and for different reasons. That's an argument that came through clearly in Evans' work.
One criticism I have is that I mostly wanted him to explore *why* Eleanor was depicted the way she was at any given moment in history. For several case studies, Evans did a good job with this (like when he was discussing the Golden Myth of Eleanor that emerged during Second Wave Feminism). But there were other moments I wish he'd spent more time with. Why *did* the Fair Rosamund / Evil Eleanor legend inspire so many 18th and 19th century dramatists and painters? How did the Second Wave Feminists react to that same story a century later? I suppose these questions would have required Evans to speak confidently on areas of history he might not be specialized in, but those were some of the questions I was left with.
Another thing that wowed me reading this book was how confidently earlier historians would just make things up. Sometimes Evans thought one or two of these earlier historians had misunderstood a medieval text or else misremembered, but so much seems to have been their own invention. From this I took away that the boundary between history and fiction didn't used to be so hard. But their history is the history we've inherited, internalized, and the history we have to make something of now.
At the end of the book, Evans asked the reader "why Eleanor?" Why not Empress Matilda instead, or Berenguela of Castile, or Adela of Blois? Evans offered a few suggestions, but I think that the answer might be even simpler than the "right place/right time" hypothesis he put forward. I ultimately think that it's the combination of romance and monarchical power that makes Eleanor so attractive to storytellers. This is why we still tell the story of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville or Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn today. These are the kinds of stories that excite us. It's also why Empress Matilda (unfortunately) doesn't excite us as much as Eleanor does. The common understanding of Matilda's story is missing a romantic element.
Did Henry II and Eleanor love each other? We can't know. But the story of Eleanor's dramatic divorce and shockingly quick remarriage to her ex-husband's most bitter rival certainly has the potential for romance. And for a storyteller, what's more seductive than that?
P.S. I had a thought about the cover, because wow is it boring! I think because Evans spent so much time criticizing covers of books about Eleanor, maybe his publishers got insecure about putting any picture on the cover and went with the orange and white scheme instead. Alas, Evans may have played himself.
I also love the book's title. Because Evans is right. We're always reinventing Eleanor as times change. Because as times change, what Eleanor *means* to us changes too. And that's because *we* change. And then we want different things than our ancestors did. So we approach history differently, and for different reasons. That's an argument that came through clearly in Evans' work.
One criticism I have is that I mostly wanted him to explore *why* Eleanor was depicted the way she was at any given moment in history. For several case studies, Evans did a good job with this (like when he was discussing the Golden Myth of Eleanor that emerged during Second Wave Feminism). But there were other moments I wish he'd spent more time with. Why *did* the Fair Rosamund / Evil Eleanor legend inspire so many 18th and 19th century dramatists and painters? How did the Second Wave Feminists react to that same story a century later? I suppose these questions would have required Evans to speak confidently on areas of history he might not be specialized in, but those were some of the questions I was left with.
Another thing that wowed me reading this book was how confidently earlier historians would just make things up. Sometimes Evans thought one or two of these earlier historians had misunderstood a medieval text or else misremembered, but so much seems to have been their own invention. From this I took away that the boundary between history and fiction didn't used to be so hard. But their history is the history we've inherited, internalized, and the history we have to make something of now.
At the end of the book, Evans asked the reader "why Eleanor?" Why not Empress Matilda instead, or Berenguela of Castile, or Adela of Blois? Evans offered a few suggestions, but I think that the answer might be even simpler than the "right place/right time" hypothesis he put forward. I ultimately think that it's the combination of romance and monarchical power that makes Eleanor so attractive to storytellers. This is why we still tell the story of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville or Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn today. These are the kinds of stories that excite us. It's also why Empress Matilda (unfortunately) doesn't excite us as much as Eleanor does. The common understanding of Matilda's story is missing a romantic element.
Did Henry II and Eleanor love each other? We can't know. But the story of Eleanor's dramatic divorce and shockingly quick remarriage to her ex-husband's most bitter rival certainly has the potential for romance. And for a storyteller, what's more seductive than that?
P.S. I had a thought about the cover, because wow is it boring! I think because Evans spent so much time criticizing covers of books about Eleanor, maybe his publishers got insecure about putting any picture on the cover and went with the orange and white scheme instead. Alas, Evans may have played himself.
December 11, 2017
A diligent investigation of both the Black Legend and the Golden Myth as they affect portrayals in historiography and all mediums.
December 31, 2016
A really, really thorough review of everything that goes into the modern image of Eleanor of Aquitaine. The author first reviews what is actually known about Eleanor, things which have actual historical evidence and can be taken as fact. This was the part I found most interesting; much has been built up over the centuries that is the result of wishful thinking both by detractors and fans of Eleanor. I'm sure many people's fondly held myths will be debunked here. Then the rest of the book goes into exhausting detail about how Eleanor has been protrayed throughout the later centuries, by whatever the "popular media" of the time was, from songs and plays in the 13th century to movies in the 20th century. You may not not learn much new about Eleanor (and may end up actually "knowing" less than you thought you did), but you will see some interesting insights into her portrayals by different people in different eras.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews