The Reputation of Edward II, 1305–1697: A Literary Transformation of History by Kit Heyem

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Reputation of Edward II, 1305–1697: A Literary Transformation of History by Kit Heyem Laurel Zwissler kit heyem. The Reputation of Edward II, 1305–1697: A Literary Transformation of History. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2020. Pp. 347. Medieval England's Edward II was bewitched into sodomy! At least that is how some of his contemporaries understood the situation. In The Reputation of Edward II, literary historian and queer activist Kit Heyem (they/them) investigates multiple threads that form Edward's constructed reputation. "Reputations" becomes more accurate wording: Heyem deftly demonstrates [End Page 363] that regardless of the ultimate unknowability of who Edward II really was and what he actually did, least of all in bed, his story has been deployed in a great number of ways through the last nine hundred years. He has been an exemplum of misrule via favoritism, a righteous king foully martyred by traitors, and a queer forebear. The goal of the book is not to resolve these contradictions, but instead to trace their origins and development through the textual tradition around Edward II, starting with his contemporaries (1305), through Christopher Marlowe's notorious play (1592), to literary critics today. Heyem does so with both meticulous attention to detail and engaging wit. Along the way, they touch on many topics of interest to Magic, Ritual & Witchcraft readers, including inversion narratives, love magic, and scholarly assumptions about literary genres and cultural transmission. Appearing in the series "Gendering the Late Medieval and Modern World," through Amsterdam University Press, The Reputation of Edward II is the first monograph for Heyem, currently Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Queen Mary University of London. The book builds on their existing scholarship not so much in subject but in methodology, creatively rethinking historiography of gender and sexuality. Heyem is clear that the continued fascination with Edward II's reign, fall, and murder comes from interwoven associations of sexual and political transgression and, while not the exclusive focus of the book, their co-symbolism with inversion narratives of evil, such as riot, misrule, and sodomy. Heyem introduces the sketched narrative of Edward II's life. Known for intense emotional attachments to male favorites, Edward is eventually deposed by disgruntled nobles supporting his wife and infant son. Initially imprisoned, he dies mysteriously, most likely murdered, probably by suffocation. If, having read this far, you are thinking to yourself, "That is definitely not how I heard he died," then you already know that within a generation, the popular story emerges that he was, instead, killed through the anal insertion of a hot poker, understood at the time as a clandestine execution, leaving no external marks on the body. In the years since, however, this elaborate story of execution has accreted a sense of "sexual mimesis," as gruesome parody of the sodomy for which Edward was also simultaneously, if posthumously, becoming infamous. The book is structured thematically, investigating "key preoccupations" within medieval and early modern narratives (26). The first chapter mobilizes queer linguistic historiography to investigate the usefulness of terms, such as "riot" and "minion," preferred over the more rarely used "sodomy," to imply that Edward II transgressed sexually, perhaps with men, but to leave [End Page 364] authors with "plausible deniability" for the charge (35). Chapter 2 focuses more specifically on the development of the explicit idea that Edward's more general reputation for sexual transgression and his reputation for having inappropriate attachments to male favorites collapsed into a specific reputation for sexual transgressions with those very male favorites themselves, a process which Marlowe's play culminates. Chapter 3 looks more closely at Edward's relationship with Gaveston, his childhood friend and first favorite, and the ways that, despite their simultaneous condemnation, early modern chroniclers and even Marlowe himself romanticize their pairing, offering surprisingly positive, if tragic, depictions of same-sex love. Chapter 4 brings us to bewitchment. Heyem cleverly connects not only the genre of "evil counsel" literature, but also kings' "mistress complaint," to contemporaries' writing about Gaveston. In it, he is often depicted as uncannily beautiful and irresistible, perhaps witchily so (see especially 147–51 for connections to male witches and demonology). The political purpose that witchcraft...