MARS 2024
Eighth Medieval and Renaissance Symposium
organized by
Institute of English Studies, University of Łódź
and Geoffrey Chaucer Student Society
23.09.2025
Various Aspects of the Medieval (and Medievalist) Kingship and Queenship
The year 2025 marks the millennial anniversary of the coronation of the first Polish king, Boleslaus the Brave (Bolesław Chrobry). He was, in fact, crowned in the last year of his life after a long rule of 33 years during which, however, he was described as merely the Prince of Poland. Some historians used to argue that he was in fact crowned already in the year 1000 by the German (formally Roman) emperor Otto III. This point of view is now largely rejected, but the above-mentioned facts show that to obtain the crown was, at least in some parts of medieval Europe, no easy affair. Indeed no Polish prince dared to put on the crown between 1079 and 1295. And yet the medieval Polish historian Wincenty Kadłubek (in Latin Vincentius Cadlubkonis), who lived exactly at the time when there was for long no Polish king, in his Chronicles asserts that “a crippled animal is ridiculous, just as a headless man; and the body without the soul, the lamp without light, the world without the sun are the same as a state without the king”.
Coronations were not usually so problematic in the West. But there is the case of the mysterious coronation of the early medieval King Edgar, who ruled over England from 959 to 975, but who was crowned only in 973, but who, unlike Boleslaus the Bold, was referred to as the king of England also before his strangely delayed coronation. And then we have in the Middle Ages the cases of the English kings’ being dethroned and soon killed, namely those of Edward II and Richard II in the 14th century. The latter became the subject of the famous play by William Shakespeare, where the problem of kingship, awaking so many bitter thoughts, is discussed at length, even though Shakespeare’s probably most poignant vision of kingship appears in his King Lear.
Medieval literature also abounds in the problematics of kingship and queenship. This is of course particularly true of the legendary King Arthur "The Once and Future King", who has to prove his right to become king by drawing the sword from a stone. His wife, the much-maligned but still dignified Queen Guinevere, represents, on the one hand, the archetype of the femme fatale whose disloyalty leads to the downfall of the Arthurian world, but, on the other hand, she has often been interpreted as a complex and tragic character figure whose trespasses can be defended, as they were already in William Morris’s 1858 poem The Defence of Guenevere.
Similar motifs can be found in modern fantasy literature. I mean particularly, though not only, the works of J.R.R.Tolkien, who was certainly a monarchist attached to the idea of the return of the king which appears in The Lord of the Rings, embodied in King Aragorn, and in The Hobbit, represented by Thorin Oakenshield, a much more tragic figure connected with the archetype of King under the Mountain which brings back to mind many medieval parallels. Unforgettable is also Queen Galadriel, who, as a model of queenship, owing to her loyalty and prudence, may be perhaps called an anti-Guinevere.
The above-sketched and related matters, both medieval and medievalist, or concerned with Renaissance literature, will hopefully be mentioned and discussed in our annual MARS meeting, which is due to take place in September 2025.
The conference will be open to all (including MA and PhD students) and there is no fee for participation.
Please send your proposals to piotr.spyra@uni.lodz.pl no later than 1 June 2024.