In this powerful, wide-ranging study, John Watkins demonstrates how dynastic marriages that attempt to make peace by bridging religions, cultures, and states shift tellingly over the centuries. His touchstone, the wedding of Aeneas and Lavinia with which the Aeneid concludes, helps crystallize a pattern of changes. In the centuries immediately following the advent of Christianity, such alliances promised a welcome fusion of cultures and ethnic groups. Northern European countries subsequently represent dynastic marriages as a form of Christian conversion, mirroring how accounts of those weddings themselves convert classical texts into allusions to the wedding at hand. Medieval representations variously emphasize and problematize how successfully women fulfill the role of peacemaker. The doubts intensify in subsequent French and English writings, notably Shakespeare’s King John and Henry V and the work of Corneille and Racine. Concluding his historical survey with seventeenth-century France, Watkins continues his demonstration of how nationalism and allied socioeconomic...
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
June 1, 2019
Book Review|
June 01 2019
After Lavinia: A Literary History of Premodern Marriage Diplomacy
After Lavinia: A Literary History of Premodern Marriage Diplomacy
. By Watkins, John. Ithaca, NY
: Cornell University Press
, 2017
. xii + 274 pp.
Heather Dubrow
Heather Dubrow
Heather Dubrow is John D. Boyd, SJ, Chair in Poetic Imagination at Fordham University; her previous appointments include Carleton College and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Among her publications are seven single-authored books, a coedited collection of essays, an edition of As You Like It, a volume of her own poetry, and essays on teaching and educational policy.
Search for other works by this author on:
Modern Language Quarterly (2019) 80 (2): 224–226.
Citation
Heather Dubrow; After Lavinia: A Literary History of Premodern Marriage Diplomacy. Modern Language Quarterly 1 June 2019; 80 (2): 224–226. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-7368248
Download citation file:
Advertisement
65
Views
0
Citations