6. I answered this one on tumblr, so I'll c/p from over there:
I’ve had a pretty-much abandoned fic in the pipeline for years which was all about Hotspur's dad!crush on Henry IV, but I've never really written it because I have a lot of trouble writing Hotspur. Especially since in this case he'd be a bit of an unreliable narrator - he wouldn't recognize what was going on internally, but the audience would have to, and when I started it, I didn't really have confidence in my ability to make that clear. Later on (like, recently) a few elements of that fic were absorbed into this one, so I probably won't do it now
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Oooh, girl!Richard fic sounds like the best thing ever. I am really, really interested in masculinity studies in general, so that sort of thought exercise is just wonderful.
The whole premise of it is that a lot of things that were disastrous for Richard in real life might have worked out better for him if he'd been female, because quite a few of the things that were considered fatal flaws in a man were considered forgivable in a woman.
*nods* Yes, I can definitely see that. It seems to me that it can actually be useful to respond to the historiography of Richard rather like you would for a woman, given that so much of the criticism of him is very gendered and adjectives usually applied to women who transgress against social norms (hysterical, whiny, bratty, etc.) are often applied to him.
It seems to me that it can actually be useful to respond to the historiography of Richard rather like you would for a woman, given that so much of the criticism of him is very gendered and adjectives usually applied to women who transgress against social norms (hysterical, whiny, bratty, etc.) are often applied to him.
Rackin and Howard's Engendering a Nation pretty much does that explicitly -- they say that Richard "plays the 'woman' to Bolingbroke's 'man'" or something along those lines! And of course there have been a couple of productions that have cross-cast the part -- Fiona Shaw did it almost 20 years ago, and Cate Blanchett more recently
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Wow! I've been reading your journal for something like eight years now, and over those years I assembled a general idea of what your dissertation is about, yet I never saw (or forget if I did) this abstract of its argument before. It is super keen and I love it, and it relates very vaguely to the stuff I did when I was still an academic.
Your dissertation sounds awesome! Kingship and the gaze, yes. I am fascinated by Elizabeth's use of the conventions of courtly love to construct the discourse around her gender and the monarchy--have you read Carole Levin's The Heart and Stomach of a King? Books on Elizabeth's marriage negotiations and gendered political language are basically a small cottage industry, but I think it's one of the better ones.
(I tend to assume Elizabeth's aversion to marriage was pretty genuine). Yes, I agree--I think she had a host of very compelling personal and political reasons for avoiding marriage. But I think that both historians and the general public seem to be rather, er, literal-minded about her sex life--as you note, there is all sorts of scope for same-sex relations as well as a whole range of sexual activities she could have been participating in. (I mean, I do recognize that this was a person who was watched nearly every moment of her life--but if fictional portrayals do choose to posit a sex life for Elizabeth, I find it a bit
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12. What WIPs do you have going now? Are you excited about them?
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I’ve had a pretty-much abandoned fic in the pipeline for years which was all about Hotspur's dad!crush on Henry IV, but I've never really written it because I have a lot of trouble writing Hotspur. Especially since in this case he'd be a bit of an unreliable narrator - he wouldn't recognize what was going on internally, but the audience would have to, and when I started it, I didn't really have confidence in my ability to make that clear. Later on (like, recently) a few elements of that fic were absorbed into this one, so I probably won't do it now ( ... )
Reply
The whole premise of it is that a lot of things that were disastrous for Richard in real life might have worked out better for him if he'd been female, because quite a few of the things that were considered fatal flaws in a man were considered forgivable in a woman.
*nods* Yes, I can definitely see that. It seems to me that it can actually be useful to respond to the historiography of Richard rather like you would for a woman, given that so much of the criticism of him is very gendered and adjectives usually applied to women who transgress against social norms (hysterical, whiny, bratty, etc.) are often applied to him.
Reply
Rackin and Howard's Engendering a Nation pretty much does that explicitly -- they say that Richard "plays the 'woman' to Bolingbroke's 'man'" or something along those lines! And of course there have been a couple of productions that have cross-cast the part -- Fiona Shaw did it almost 20 years ago, and Cate Blanchett more recently ( ... )
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(I tend to assume Elizabeth's aversion to marriage was pretty genuine). Yes, I agree--I think she had a host of very compelling personal and political reasons for avoiding marriage. But I think that both historians and the general public seem to be rather, er, literal-minded about her sex life--as you note, there is all sorts of scope for same-sex relations as well as a whole range of sexual activities she could have been participating in. (I mean, I do recognize that this was a person who was watched nearly every moment of her life--but if fictional portrayals do choose to posit a sex life for Elizabeth, I find it a bit ( ... )
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