This work offers a new portrayal of Queen Maria Carolina of Naples as a woman of power with weaknesses and ambitions, and analyzes the Queen's actions, from her political choices to her alliance and betrayals. A careful examination of the period (1781-1785) covered by the diary shows that the daily life of the Queen and offers key evidence of her political acumen and her personal relationships. Recca cross-analyses unpublished personal documents, which include the integral diary and private correspondence. The book focuses on the political influence that Queen Maria Carolina wielded beside her husband, King Ferdinand IV, and the criticism that has been made by contemporary historians and intellectuals who have often tended to discredit the sovereign for personal rather than political reasons.

This book demonstrates the cultivation of instrumental genres by Neapolitan musicians and its significant stature at the royal court. Drawing on archival documents and musical sources, it paints a compelling history of local instrumental music culture and contributes to a wider ethnographic portrait of Naples in the late eighteenth-century.

Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe examines queens dowager and queens consort who have disappeared from history or have been deeply misunderstood in modern historical treatment. Divided into eleven chapters, this book covers queenship from 1016 to 1800, demonstrating the influence of queens in different aspects of monarchy over eight centuries and furthering our knowledge of the roles and challenges that they faced. It also promotes a deeper understanding of the methods of power and patronage for women who were not queens, many of which have since become mythologized into what historians have wanted them to be. The chronological organisation of the book, meanwhile, allows the reader to see more clearly how these forgotten queens are related by the power, agency, and patronage they displayed, despite the mythologization to which they have all been subjected. Offering a broad geographical coverage and providing a comparison of queenship across a range of disciplines, such as religious history, art history, and literature, Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe is ideal for students and scholars of pre-modern queenship and of medieval and early modern history courses more generally.

This study extends from the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799 to the first unification of Italy in 1861, and presents insights into the work of feminist authors who responded to the Italian Risorgimento in their writings, including novels, poetry and non-fiction political analyses. The narratives of these women form a cohesive view of emerging feminism in the nineteenth century in response to the Italian Risorgimento. A number of American and British women who lived in Italy (Emma Hamilton, Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Barrett Browning), as well as Italian women (Eleonora Fonesca Pimentel and Cristina Belgiojoso), participated directly in the developing events of the Risorgimento revolutions for Italian independence and unification, while British, French and American authors who travelled to Italy, including Mary Shelley, George Sand, Marie d’Agoult (Daniel Stern) and Edith Wharton joined their cause and rallied support for democracy, civic justice and gender equality. These authors promoted gender equality through their feminist narratives and political analyses of the Italian Risorgimento.

Dynastic Change: Legitimacy and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Monarchy examines the strategies for change and legitimacy in monarchies in the medieval and early modern eras. Taking a broadly comparative approach, Dynastic Change explores the mechanisms employed as well as theoretical and practical approaches to monarchical legitimisation. The book answers the question of how monarchical families reacted, adjusted or strategised when faced with dynastic crises of various kinds, such as a lack of a male heir or unfitness of a reigning monarch for rule, through the consideration of such themes as the role of royal women, the uses of the arts for representational and propaganda purposes and the impact of religion or popular will. Broad in both chronological and geographical scope, chapters discuss examples from the 9th to the 18th centuries across such places as Morocco, Byzantium, Portugal, Russia and Western Europe, showing readers how cultural, religious and political differences across countries and time periods affected dynastic relations. Bringing together gender, monarchy and dynasticism, the book highlights parallels across time and place, encouraging a new approach to monarchy studies. It is the perfect collection for students and researchers of medieval and early modern monarchy and gender.

This book demonstrates the evolution of resilience and recovery as a concept by applying it to a new context, that of courts and monarchies. These were remarkably resilient institutions, with a strength and malleability that allowed them to ‘bounce back’ time and again. This volume highlights the different forms of resilience displayed in European courts during the medieval and early modern periods. Drawing on rarely published sources, it demonstrates different models of monarchical resilience, ranging from the survival of sovereign authority in political crisis, to the royal response to pandemic challenges, to other strategies for resisting internal or external threats. Resilience and Recovery illustrates how symbolic legitimacy and effective power were strongly intertwined, creating a distinct collective memory that shaped the defence of monarchical authority over many centuries.

Offering a fascinating survey of European queenship from 1500-1800, with each chapter beginning with a discussion of the archetypal queens of Western, Central, Northern, and Eastern Europe, Charles Beem explores the particular nature of the regional forms and functions of queenship – including consorts, queens regnant, dowagers and female regents – while interrogating our understanding of the dynamic operations of queenship as a transnational phenomenon in European history. Incorporating detailed discussions of gender and material culture, this book encourages both instructors and student readers to engage in meaningful further research on queenship. This is an excellent overview of an exciting area of historical research and is the perfect companion for undergraduate and postgraduate students of History with an interest in queens and queenship.