The King's Matter: Text, Flesh, and Political Performance in the Reign of Edward IV (1461-1483)

Abstract

“The King’s Matter: Text, Flesh, and Political Performance in the Reign of Edward IV (1461-1483)” reconsiders how royal authority in late medieval England was made visible, legible, and credible through the interplay of text, body, and performance. Centering on Edward IV (1442-1483; r. 1461-1483), whose reign was forged in the aftermath of civil war and usurpation, this dissertation argues that political power in the fifteenth century was not simply represented but produced through ritualized encounters with the king’s body, encounters mediated through manuscripts, ceremonies, and devotional practices. Drawing together political theology, performance theory, and manuscript studies, “The King’s Matter” demonstrates how sovereignty was enacted as a collaborative process between ruler and subjects, and how the royal body operated as a living site of negotiation for power. Through paleographical and codicological analysis, the project traces the sensory and material means by which Edward’s kingship was continually reimagined in diverse contexts. Four case studies reveal how textual and bodily performances intersected across alchemical, civic, devotional, and funerary settings. Chapter One examines what I call the Roll of Reason (London, British Library, Harley MS 7353), which reconfigures Edward’s accession through alchemical imagery and Galenic medical knowledge, casting the new king’s body as the Elixir that restored balance to a disordered realm. Chapter Two turns to Bristol’s 1461 royal entry, in which civic pageantry and mayoral ritual mapped royal power onto local urban governance. Chapter Three analyzes the so-called Edward Oes—Bridgettine devotional prayers produced at Syon Abbey after Edward’s refoundation of the house—to show how monastic writers aligned his kingship with Christ’s redemptive suffering. The final chapter reads the “Lament for the Soul of Edward IV” and the planned cadaver tomb at Windsor to argue that royal authority persisted beyond death through the textual and architectural mediation of the king’s remains.By situating kingship within the manuscript, ritual, and devotional cultures that sustained it, this study challenges centralized models of monolithic sovereignty. It reveals Edward’s body (living, textual, and posthumous) as a site where theology and politics were made material through repetition, touch, and representation. “The King’s Matter” reframes late-medieval monarchy as a participatory system of meaning-making in which authority was not decreed from the center but performed into being through the sensory, textual, and communal practices of everyday political and religious life.