‘She will wear the britsch’: Masculinity and the iconography of Prince Albert

This article examines the early representations of Prince Albert that either satirize or attempt to reconcile the hierarchical ambiguities and issue of threatened masculinity that resulted from unconventional male consortship and female rule. It concludes that the latter was achieved through the development of a suitable and legible iconography for a nineteenth-century male consort in adherence with British iconographic tradition and values. Drawing from methods in nineteenth-century art history as well as gender and performance studies and anthropology, it argues that images of the male body play a fundamental role in the construction and perpetuation of masculine ideology and subjectivity through the creation of the semblance of an innate and axiomatic masculine archetype. In doing so, this article problematizes and historicizes masculinity by illuminating the plurality of expressions of masculinity and rejecting the essentialist narrative of masculinity as something measurable or quantifiable, as well as ahistorical, atemporal, apolitical and heteronormative.

Historiograficzne próby Lucjana Rydla

Lucjan Rydel authored a dramatic trilogy about King Sigismund II Augustus. He described the 16th century with great erudition as regards the material and political history of the period. He had studied numerous historical records as well as scholarly works. He also wrote an academic essay on Charles de Nassau. The main areas of his interest in history were texts of didactic and popular character. He wrote a monograph entitled Queen Hedwig, where he collected the themes of female rule in literature and art. He published brochures on buildings of historical interest in Krakow, Warsaw and Vilnius. He brought out A Short History of Poland and History of Poland for Everybody, both of which were written during the Great War. His ambition was to write accessible textbooks on the history of the Polish nation and Polish state with a view to boosting the patriotism of Poles. In matters of ideology, his works were leaning towards conservative views.

Breaking the Reputation of Female Rule in China: Daoism and the Rewriting of the History of the Reign of Wu Zhao (624-705)

Usurpation by a woman made the reign of Wu Zhao a problem in the history writing of the restored Tang dynasty (618-907; interregnum 690-705) and thereafter that has often attracted the epithet ‘Confucian’. An examination of the rewriting of history to change the meaning of two miracles reported during her reign – the appearance of a new (though small) mountain and of Laozi, supposed ancestor of the Tang imperial line – shows that among those keen to repurpose these events were later Daoists, who were engaged in a long term struggle with the Buddhists, the main beneficiaries of her rule. This suggests that we need a more nuanced approach than simply designating all retrospective criticism of her as ‘Confucian’, even if the ultimate origins of the attempts at historical revision are as yet hard to discern.