Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen and Legend

by D.D.R. Owen

Book Overview

This fascinating new biography tells the story of one of the most influential figures of the twelfth century, Eleanor of Aquitaine, successively queen of France and of England. In tracing her life... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0631170723
• ISBN13: 9780631170723
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Blackwell Publishers
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Eleanor of Aquitaine: beauty and warts, but no fluff

The late D.D.R. Owen was Professor Emeritus of French at Scotland's University of St. Andrews. He had acquired the languages, the deep cultural knowledge and the scholar's discipline that equipped him to compose a fine, restrained biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Owen's treatment is careful to draw a line between rumor and fact (insofar as that line can be drawn more than eight centuries later). He exposes rumors, plays them down and turns his attention to accenting history. Eleanor was a patron and sponsor of troubadours at her many courts. Verses and songs in her praise inevitably fueled the whiff of scandal. Her enemies' verses and whisperings, her larger than life character and the written records of tut-tutting clerics from Paris to Antioch all darkened her record. Owen set himself the task of rubbing away the grime of ages to expose the life at the core. His account of Eleanor's limitations and excesses is no less interesting for that. Thus he can show more clearly than most how much authority this amazing woman did, or did not, exercise through sixty-seven years during which she counseled, provoked or scorned four kings, two of them her husbands, two of them her sons. Owen's "Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen and Legend" is the book for readers who want their Eleanor, beauty, warts and all, but shorn of celebrity fluff. In that sense it complements Bonnie Wheeler's and John Parsons' "Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady." Both books offer scholarly approaches. They are well matched in presenting well-crafted interpretations of violent, turbulent, very strange times, with a strong-willed queen presiding. Robert Fripp, author of Power of a Woman. Memoirs of a turbulent life: Eleanor of Aquitaine

Eleanor

This is a great book. I learned so much from this book. I am doing a project on Queen Eleanor and it helped me so much.I hope everyone else learns as much as I did! I hope that she will still have her name in history in a houndred years from now. ENJOY the book.

An excellent biography of a wonderful women

This book was an accurate account of Eleanor of Aquitaine. He does a wonderful job in depicting her life.