Portraits of the Queen Mother: Polemics, Panegyrics, Letters (Volume 35) (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series)

Catherine de Médicis was portrayed in her day as foreign usurper, loving queen and queen mother, patron of the arts, and Machiavellian murderer of Protestants. Leah L. Chang and Katherine Kong assemble a diverse array of scathing polemic and lofty praise, diplomatic reports, and Catherine’s own letters, which together show how one extraordinary woman’s rule intersected with early modern conceptions of gender, maternity, and power. Cover Title Page Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Letters of Catherine de Médicis, Selections Relazioni of the Venetian Ambassadors on the Affairs of France in the Sixteenth Century, Selections Marvelous Discourse on the Life, Actions, and Deportment of Catherine de Médicis, Queen Mother (1576), Selections Pierre de Bourdeille, Seigneur de Brantôme, “Second Discourse on the Queen, Mother of Our Last Kings, Catherine de Médicis,” Selections. From Book of Ladies, Poetry, and Funerary Writings Appendix “Letters of Naturalization for Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, and Catherine, His Daughter” “Copy of Letters Sent to the Queen Mother by One of Her Servants after the Death of the Late King Henri II” An Alarm for the French and Their Neighbors. Composed by Eusèbe Philadelphe Cosmopolite, in the Form of Dialogues, Selections The Tocsin, against the Slaughterers and Perpetrators of Confusion in France (1577), Selections Oration Given at the Funeral Rites of the Queen Mother of the King by Monsieur Renaud de Beaune, Selections Etienne Pasquier on the Death of the Queen Mother Bibliography Index