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Premodern Rulership and Contemporary Political Power

The King's Body Never Dies

Karolina Anna Mroziewicz Aleksander Sroczynski Pawel Figurski Álvaro Carvajal Castro Foteini Spingou Wojciech Kozlowski Ágnes Máté Emilia Olechnowicz Gábor Szegedi Piotr Slodkowski

9789462983311
448 pages
Amsterdam University Press
Overview
In the medieval period, the monarch was seen as the embodiment of the community of his kingdom, the body politic. And while we've long since shed that view, it nonetheless continues to influence our understanding of contemporary politics. This book offers thirteen case studies from premodern and contemporary Europe that demonstrate the process through which political corporations-bodies politic-were and continue to be constructed and challenged. Drawing on history, archaeology, literary criticism, and art history, the contributors survey a wide geographical and chronological spectrum to offer a panoramic view of these dynamic political entities.
Author Bio
Karolina Mroziewicz (Institute of Art History of the Jagiellonian University, Cracow) received her PhD in cultural studies from the University in Warsaw. Currently she works on the role of pre-modern images of kings in constituting national narratives in Central Europe. Aleksander Sroczynski (PhD candidate, University of Warsaw) researches Old-Polish and Old-Croatian cultures.