Reflections on the Posthumous French and Latin Voices of Scotland’s Royal Women: Margaret Stewart (d. 1445) and Madeleine of Valois (d. 1537)

Abstract

This essay considers two little known Scottish royal women, Margaret of Scotland (d. 1445) and Madeleine of Valois (1520-1537), and interrogates examples of male-authored verse (in Scots, French, and Latin) composed on the occasion of their marriages and deaths. It discusses how the female voice of these two women was ventriloquized for notably political purposes, and how the textual construction of the royal female voice was linked inextricably to the broader crafting of these women’s identities. Such analysis in turn encourages further consideration of how speech in medieval and early modern European literature was imagined within specifically gendered contexts, and raises further crucial questions of agency and autonomy, in particular concerning who has responsibility for the memorialization of these women and what control women more generally had over their own voice - and bodies - in life and death.