CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2008
| Author | Ferenczi, Ilona Edit |
|---|---|
| Title | Representations of Queen Mary |
| Summary | The Carmen seu historia Carolo II cognomento Parvo Rege Hungariae is a contemporary account about the political troubles under the reign of Queen Mary (1382-1395), the only queen who ever ruled Hungary in the Middle Ages. It is a 560-line Latin hexametric epic, written in 1388 by the Venetian poet, notary and chronicler, Lorenzo Monaci, who fulfilled diplomatic missions in Hungary on multiple occasions. Both the poem and the dedicatory letter prefacing it have been extensively used by scholars as historical sources; no one, however, has ever analyzed it as a literary product. This thesis deals with Monaci’ Carmen as a literary construction. As such, the image it conveys about Queen Mary as well as about late fourteenth-century Hungarian events needs to be contextualized and can be only be accepted with caution. I explored three different contexts for a better reading of the poem: Lorenzo Monaci’s Venetian bias; Hungarian-Venetian diplomatic and political relations; and the problems of female rule in Angevin Hungary. I deconstructed the contrastive images of Queen Mary and her rival, Charles of Durazzo and their different interpretations in the Carmen, an outstanding Gesamtkunstwerk of medieval historical literature. |
| Supervisor | Klaniczay, Gábor; Sághy, Marianne |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2008/ferenczi_ilona.pdf |
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