Document Type
Article
Peer Reviewed
1
Abstract
The reign of John I of Aragon (r. 1387–1396) and his second wife Violant de Bar has been often denigrated by Catalan historiography with political arguments but also because of ensuing gender debates associating the shortcomings of his reign with his supposed manly weakness. This article deconstructs both political and gendered representations of the Aragonese monarchs by distinguishing what is reasonably attributable to them from accusations motivated by the conflicts of the time and later contexts. Drawing upon the concepts of “hegemonic masculinity” and “multiple masculinities,” the article compares the gender representations of King John I and Queen Violant in various coetaneous texts and Catalan historiography from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century.
Acknowledgements
This article is part of the Special Issue, titled, “Intersections of Gender and Genres in Medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” Research for this article was conducted within the framework of the research project, “Writing Religious, Transcultural, and Gender Identities and Alterities in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean,” financed by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Universidades, the Agencia Estatal de Investigación y la Unión Europa, ref. no. PGC2018-093472-B-C32 (2019-2022).
Keywords
medieval royal masculinity, medieval queenship, gender roles, John I of Aragón, Martin I of Aragón, Violant de Bar, Catalan historiography
Recommended Citation
Catalán, Oriol "Gender and Historiography in the Construction of the Image of King John and Queen Violant of Aragon." Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 61, No. 2 (2026)
