Erika Graham-Goering | University of Oslo (original) (raw)
Books by Erika Graham-Goering
Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought (Cambridge University Press), 2020
Jeanne de Penthièvre (c.1326–1384), duchess of Brittany, was an active and determined ruler who ... more Jeanne de Penthièvre (c.1326–1384), duchess of Brittany, was an active and determined ruler who maintained her claim to the duchy throughout a war of succession and even after her eventual defeat. This in-depth study examines Jeanne’s administrative and legal records to explore her co-rule with her husband, the social implications of ducal authority, and her strategies of legitimization in the face of conflict. While studies of medieval political authority often privilege royal, male, and exclusive models of power, Erika Graham-Goering reveals how there were multiple coexisting standards of princely action, and it was the navigation of these expectations that was more important to the successful exercise of power than adhering to any single approach. Cutting across categories of hierarchy, gender, and collaborative rule, this perspective sheds light on women’s rulership as a crucial component in the power structures of the early Hundred Years’ War, and demonstrates that lordship retained salience as a political category even in a period of growing monarchical authority.
Articles by Erika Graham-Goering
Historical Research, 2022
While ceremonial progresses and civic entries have been understood primarily through the lens of ... more While ceremonial progresses and civic entries have been understood primarily through the lens of urban–royal relationships, they were also occasions for the political engagement of the rural elite. A case study of the homages performed by southern French lords to King Charles VI shows that the landed aristocracy was integral to the royal agenda. It also offers an innovative spatial approach to analysing their agency in this process, which reinforced their own authority and social interests. The reciprocity of this interaction attests the deliberate incorporation of local lordship into the co-operative structures of late medieval government.
Journal of Medieval History, 2019
This article examines how a medieval noblewoman’s positive reputation could be framed through dif... more This article examines how a medieval noblewoman’s positive reputation could be framed through different aspects of seigneurial power, using a case study of Jeanne de Penthièvre and her war for the duchy of Brittany. Froissart wrote about Jeanne in the three main redactions of the first book of his Chroniques. However, he focused in the Amiens manuscript on her position as an heiress and the object of her followers’ loyalty, while the B text largely reduced her prominence but planted the seeds for the active military role Jeanne assumed in the Rome redaction. Such changes did not move strictly between more or less accurate reports, but engaged with different tropes that had also featured in the official portrayals of Jeanne during her lifetime. These parallel constructions of reputation reveal a plasticity to models of lordly authority even in rhetorical contexts more usually associated with formulaic and conventional representations of elite society.
co-written with Prof. Michael Jones; Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest, 2019
Editions by Erika Graham-Goering
co-edited with Prof. Michael Jones and Bertrand Yeurc'h; Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2019
Chapters by Erika Graham-Goering
Repeat, Reveal, React: Identities in Flux. Selections from the Grinnell College Art Collection, Jan 29, 2010
Reviews by Erika Graham-Goering
The Court Historian, 2019
The Medieval Review, 2018
Invited Lectures by Erika Graham-Goering
La succession contestée de Jeanne de Penthièvre au duché de Bretagne en 1341 n’était pas seulemen... more La succession contestée de Jeanne de Penthièvre au duché de Bretagne en 1341 n’était pas seulement la cause de plusieurs décennies de guerre dans la région, mais aussi un moment très complexe en ce qui concerne l’étude du pouvoir princier du bas Moyen Âge tardif.
D’une part, la décision légale initiale nommait Jeanne comme duchesse de Bretagne aux côtés de son mari le duc Charles : qu’est-ce qui se produit lorsque deux princes devaient gouverner ensemble? Dans la pratique, Jeanne et Charles prenaient en charge tous les deux les obligations du gouvernement de Bretagne de 1341 à 1364, et ils représentaient conjointement et séparément l’autorité ducale. En même temps, leurs rôles n’étaient pas identiques, soit dans la rhétorique, soit en fait.
D’autre part, Jeanne devait faire face au défi continu de son rival Montfortiste: lorsque deux princes prétendaient à une même couronne, quelles stratégies pouvaient légitimer leurs pouvoirs? Pendant la Guerre de Succession ainsi qu’après sa défaite, Jeanne prêtait sans cesse son attention à promouvoir ses liens politiques et familiaux—et l’idée de ces rapports—à l’intérieur de la Bretagne. Cependant, dans certains cas elle pouvait refaire son image publique d’après un modèle de pouvoir plus compréhensif et plus éminent.
La carrière de Jeanne de Penthièvre démontre donc la variabilité du pouvoir princier à la fois selon circonstance ainsi que selon les idéals diverses qui coexistaient dans la société politique de la France médiévale.
Papers by Erika Graham-Goering
Discussions on the nature and evolution of pre-modern European polities are as old as history its... more Discussions on the nature and evolution of pre-modern European polities are as old as history itself as an academic discipline. When the scholarly enquiry into the past found a home in universities, first in the German-speaking world with the efflorescence of Historismus in the early nineteenth century and soon after in other parts of the world, historians were first and foremost preoccupied with tracing the genealogies of their own political projects, that is, the nineteenth-century states. Leaning heavily on the reflections of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) on language, collective identities and historical change, historians such as Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) imagined history as a great pageant in which language communities evolved into national communities, which in turn developed modern states as the container and protector of national interests. 1 In consequence, early research on ancien régime polities often carried considerable ideological ballast. Glossing over persistently problematic concepts of nations and nationalism and ignoring the imperial aspirations of many polities to rule over multiple national communities, historians were prone to hold up the trajectories of England and France, for example, as exemplars of early and successful nation-states, while the relatively late unification of German principalities, for example, into a larger political project provoked much hand-wringing reflections about a Sonderweg in the panoply of European histories. 2 In the twentieth century, and especially in postwar scholarship, historians worked hard to unburden political history from inherited ideological commitments and questionable assumptions, but for all this intellectual house-cleaning, current debates still bear the stamp of these older traditions. On the one hand, many historians are persistently prone to imagine pre-modern European polities as "states", a conceptualisation that usually rests on Max Weber's (1864-1920) famous definition of modern states as institutions with a monopoly on the use of legitimate violence-public order management as opposed to socially
In late medieval France, dénombrements were documents which a vassal provided to his or her lord ... more In late medieval France, dénombrements were documents which a vassal provided to his or her lord listing all the lands, properties, and dues for which they owed homage; and these records have often served historians interested in matters such as the evolution of seigneurial rights, population statistics, or feudal relationships in different parts of the kingdom. However, because each individual vassal was responsible for having the dénombrement drawn up (rather than an initiative of the administration of their overlord, be they prince or king), there was a certain amount of flexibility in their composition that allowed different perspectives to come across even while conveying the same essentials. As a genre, then, they offer far more than dry lists, yielding insights into the self-representation of lordship especially among the middle and lower ranks of the aristocracy. Using the important collection of dénombrements from 1389 when King Charles VI announced his majority with a tour to the south of France (Paris, Archives nationales, P 591 and P 1143), I will explore some of the distinctive variations such as choice of language and ‘narrator’, the range of details included superfluously (or indeed, omitted), and the characterization of relationships with other lords and neighbours. I argue that these features, studied as individual quirks and as cumulative patterns, can help us reconstruct aspects of how lordship was variously understood and interpreted by those who held it, both with regards to the physical environment of lordship and its social circumstances. Furthermore, the far-from-disinterested process of actually turning this information into recorded fact (and its subsequent adaptation into the transcribed registers that survive today) participated in a dialogue which complements constructions of lordship found in narrative sources and opens a new window onto lordly priorities at a time of governmental growth in western Europe.
Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought (Cambridge University Press), 2020
Jeanne de Penthièvre (c.1326–1384), duchess of Brittany, was an active and determined ruler who ... more Jeanne de Penthièvre (c.1326–1384), duchess of Brittany, was an active and determined ruler who maintained her claim to the duchy throughout a war of succession and even after her eventual defeat. This in-depth study examines Jeanne’s administrative and legal records to explore her co-rule with her husband, the social implications of ducal authority, and her strategies of legitimization in the face of conflict. While studies of medieval political authority often privilege royal, male, and exclusive models of power, Erika Graham-Goering reveals how there were multiple coexisting standards of princely action, and it was the navigation of these expectations that was more important to the successful exercise of power than adhering to any single approach. Cutting across categories of hierarchy, gender, and collaborative rule, this perspective sheds light on women’s rulership as a crucial component in the power structures of the early Hundred Years’ War, and demonstrates that lordship retained salience as a political category even in a period of growing monarchical authority.
Historical Research, 2022
While ceremonial progresses and civic entries have been understood primarily through the lens of ... more While ceremonial progresses and civic entries have been understood primarily through the lens of urban–royal relationships, they were also occasions for the political engagement of the rural elite. A case study of the homages performed by southern French lords to King Charles VI shows that the landed aristocracy was integral to the royal agenda. It also offers an innovative spatial approach to analysing their agency in this process, which reinforced their own authority and social interests. The reciprocity of this interaction attests the deliberate incorporation of local lordship into the co-operative structures of late medieval government.
Journal of Medieval History, 2019
This article examines how a medieval noblewoman’s positive reputation could be framed through dif... more This article examines how a medieval noblewoman’s positive reputation could be framed through different aspects of seigneurial power, using a case study of Jeanne de Penthièvre and her war for the duchy of Brittany. Froissart wrote about Jeanne in the three main redactions of the first book of his Chroniques. However, he focused in the Amiens manuscript on her position as an heiress and the object of her followers’ loyalty, while the B text largely reduced her prominence but planted the seeds for the active military role Jeanne assumed in the Rome redaction. Such changes did not move strictly between more or less accurate reports, but engaged with different tropes that had also featured in the official portrayals of Jeanne during her lifetime. These parallel constructions of reputation reveal a plasticity to models of lordly authority even in rhetorical contexts more usually associated with formulaic and conventional representations of elite society.
co-written with Prof. Michael Jones; Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest, 2019
La succession contestée de Jeanne de Penthièvre au duché de Bretagne en 1341 n’était pas seulemen... more La succession contestée de Jeanne de Penthièvre au duché de Bretagne en 1341 n’était pas seulement la cause de plusieurs décennies de guerre dans la région, mais aussi un moment très complexe en ce qui concerne l’étude du pouvoir princier du bas Moyen Âge tardif.
D’une part, la décision légale initiale nommait Jeanne comme duchesse de Bretagne aux côtés de son mari le duc Charles : qu’est-ce qui se produit lorsque deux princes devaient gouverner ensemble? Dans la pratique, Jeanne et Charles prenaient en charge tous les deux les obligations du gouvernement de Bretagne de 1341 à 1364, et ils représentaient conjointement et séparément l’autorité ducale. En même temps, leurs rôles n’étaient pas identiques, soit dans la rhétorique, soit en fait.
D’autre part, Jeanne devait faire face au défi continu de son rival Montfortiste: lorsque deux princes prétendaient à une même couronne, quelles stratégies pouvaient légitimer leurs pouvoirs? Pendant la Guerre de Succession ainsi qu’après sa défaite, Jeanne prêtait sans cesse son attention à promouvoir ses liens politiques et familiaux—et l’idée de ces rapports—à l’intérieur de la Bretagne. Cependant, dans certains cas elle pouvait refaire son image publique d’après un modèle de pouvoir plus compréhensif et plus éminent.
La carrière de Jeanne de Penthièvre démontre donc la variabilité du pouvoir princier à la fois selon circonstance ainsi que selon les idéals diverses qui coexistaient dans la société politique de la France médiévale.
Discussions on the nature and evolution of pre-modern European polities are as old as history its... more Discussions on the nature and evolution of pre-modern European polities are as old as history itself as an academic discipline. When the scholarly enquiry into the past found a home in universities, first in the German-speaking world with the efflorescence of Historismus in the early nineteenth century and soon after in other parts of the world, historians were first and foremost preoccupied with tracing the genealogies of their own political projects, that is, the nineteenth-century states. Leaning heavily on the reflections of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) on language, collective identities and historical change, historians such as Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) imagined history as a great pageant in which language communities evolved into national communities, which in turn developed modern states as the container and protector of national interests. 1 In consequence, early research on ancien régime polities often carried considerable ideological ballast. Glossing over persistently problematic concepts of nations and nationalism and ignoring the imperial aspirations of many polities to rule over multiple national communities, historians were prone to hold up the trajectories of England and France, for example, as exemplars of early and successful nation-states, while the relatively late unification of German principalities, for example, into a larger political project provoked much hand-wringing reflections about a Sonderweg in the panoply of European histories. 2 In the twentieth century, and especially in postwar scholarship, historians worked hard to unburden political history from inherited ideological commitments and questionable assumptions, but for all this intellectual house-cleaning, current debates still bear the stamp of these older traditions. On the one hand, many historians are persistently prone to imagine pre-modern European polities as "states", a conceptualisation that usually rests on Max Weber's (1864-1920) famous definition of modern states as institutions with a monopoly on the use of legitimate violence-public order management as opposed to socially
In late medieval France, dénombrements were documents which a vassal provided to his or her lord ... more In late medieval France, dénombrements were documents which a vassal provided to his or her lord listing all the lands, properties, and dues for which they owed homage; and these records have often served historians interested in matters such as the evolution of seigneurial rights, population statistics, or feudal relationships in different parts of the kingdom. However, because each individual vassal was responsible for having the dénombrement drawn up (rather than an initiative of the administration of their overlord, be they prince or king), there was a certain amount of flexibility in their composition that allowed different perspectives to come across even while conveying the same essentials. As a genre, then, they offer far more than dry lists, yielding insights into the self-representation of lordship especially among the middle and lower ranks of the aristocracy. Using the important collection of dénombrements from 1389 when King Charles VI announced his majority with a tour to the south of France (Paris, Archives nationales, P 591 and P 1143), I will explore some of the distinctive variations such as choice of language and ‘narrator’, the range of details included superfluously (or indeed, omitted), and the characterization of relationships with other lords and neighbours. I argue that these features, studied as individual quirks and as cumulative patterns, can help us reconstruct aspects of how lordship was variously understood and interpreted by those who held it, both with regards to the physical environment of lordship and its social circumstances. Furthermore, the far-from-disinterested process of actually turning this information into recorded fact (and its subsequent adaptation into the transcribed registers that survive today) participated in a dialogue which complements constructions of lordship found in narrative sources and opens a new window onto lordly priorities at a time of governmental growth in western Europe.
Jeanne de Penthièvre (r. 1341-1365) inherited the duchy of Brittany, but was challenged by her co... more Jeanne de Penthièvre (r. 1341-1365) inherited the duchy of Brittany, but was challenged by her collateral relatives in over two decades of civil war and ultimately defeated, though she remained politically active until her death. This thesis uses her career as a case study of the ways princely power was expressed and implemented in the fourteenth century, and includes both a critical biography and an edition of the 1341 legal brief for her succession. It focuses especially on official records such as legal arguments, charters, orders, and seals, and incorporates the close reading of individual texts alongside broader linguistic and quantitative analyses. The high nobility of fourteenth-century France has been relatively underserved by the individual studies that could shed greater light on the distinctive and mutable character of non-royal authority. The legal arguments advanced in defence of Jeanne’s claim to the duchy reveal disagreements about the technical relationship of the duke/duchess to the rest of Franco-Breton political society. The terms used to establish her power in the official acta suggest further that simple descriptions of power often used in modern scholarship on noblewomen do not adequately characterize or explain late medieval views of these dynamics. Jeanne’s participation across the different areas of government (such as finances, bureaucracy, warfare, and diplomacy) reveals a variable balance of power between Jeanne and her husband as spouses and as co-rulers. Jeanne’s ability to assert her authority was particularly important in the contested circumstances of her rule, and her adherence to or deviation from contemporary expectations was important in establishing her legitimacy. Contemporary Breton and French chroniclers, particularly Froissart, complement this perspective with their reactions to her rule, which were informed by the multilayered standards attached to Jeanne’s positions as heiress, wife, and duchess.
Job Description The postdoctoral researcher will participate in an ERC-funded research project th... more Job Description The postdoctoral researcher will participate in an ERC-funded research project that pursues a new interpretation of state formation in Western Europe between 1300 and 1600. This period is considered as a key phase in the genesis of the modern state, as various polities now centralized fiscal and military resources under their command. While there is debate whether this was primarily a top-down process carried out by princes, or a bottom-up process carried out by popular representation, scholars tend to agree that state building was essentially a process of centralization. This assumption must be questioned, as recent studies have raised awkward questions that cannot be answered by the current paradigm. The research hypothesis is that the emerging states of Western Europe could only acquire sufficient support among established elites if they also decentralized much of their legal authority through a process of creating or endorsing a growing number of seigneuries as " states-within-states " for the benefit of elites who in turn contributed to state building. This project will study the interplay between states and seigneurial elites in five regions – two in the Low Countries, two in France, and one in England – to test whether fiscal and military centralization was facilitated by a progressively confederal organization of government. Together, the case studies cover four key variables that shaped the relations between princes and power elites in different combinations all over Europe: 1) state formation, 2) urbanization, 3) the socioeconomic organization of rural society, and 4) ideological dissent. The comparisons between the case studies are aimed at the development of an analytical framework to chart and to explain path-dependency in Europe. The postdoctoral researcher, starting 1 September 2017, will explore secular lordship in the Netherlandish principality of Guelders and the English shire of Warwickshire. The heuristic aim is to develop a snapshot survey of seigneuries/manors and their holders of a part of each region, combining earlier scholarship with primary sources such as manorial rolls and feudal registers that are preserved in various archives (travel expenses are borne by the ERC-project). The interpretative aim is to use these case studies to engage with current theories on state formation and elite formation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.
Session I: Qualitative approaches What choices did late medieval lords and seigneurial officers m... more Session I: Qualitative approaches What choices did late medieval lords and seigneurial officers make to represent the status of their lordships to the king and, indirectly, to their contemporaries? Did rural or urban surroundings inspire different choices? How were these reflected in the administrative documents produced by lords and kings, and to what extent did the diplomatic and aesthetic qualities of the documents play a part in those considerations? This session aims to chart the political self-representation of French lords in their official documents, such as the records of the oath sworn by a lord (aveux) and the subsequent descriptions of a lordship's possession of lands, rents, and buildings (dénombrements). These and similar records can reveal what lords considered important to mention as qualities of their lordship. We seek papers offering case studies of such descriptive processes, exploring how both the salient material features of lordship and their encapsulation in written records expressed seigneurial power and status. Session II: Quantitative approaches This session aims to explore the quantitative, material impact of lordship on the West-European political landscape between 1300 and 1600. Contributors should focus on one or more regional case studies to address questions relating to the shape of seigneurial power. How did lordships expand or reduce over time? What was the extent of their jurisdiction? How did lords and ladies interact with the political institutions within their respective regions? As such, this session seeks to counterbalance the qualitative approaches taken in the first session, thereby furthering the discussion about general trends and divergences in the role of lordship in the process of European state formation in the late medieval period. Abstracts (for either session) of up to 250 words can be submitted by September 25 to erika.graham@ugent.be or jim.vandermeulen@ugent.be.