Title
White, Sadie (2025) Exploring a black legend: Catherine de’ Medici, gender and popular culture in the past and present. (published dissertation) University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth
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Abstract
This dissertation will argue that the ‘black legend’ formed in the sixteenth century have had a lasting and detrimental effect on Catherine de’ Medici’s representation in the present day. It will argue this by examining the representation of Catherine de’ Medici in both sixteenth century sources and current popular culture. It has been broadly understood that the ‘black legend’ of Catherine de’ Medici is inaccurate, despite historians often relying on the historical myths of her reputation. Catherine’s gender, Italian heritage, motherhood and religious policies, are discussed as being detrimental to her reputation and the dissertation specifically analyses these themes through sixteenth century sources such as polemics, reports, sculptures and libels. This dissertation also discusses how Catherine de’ Medici attempted to control these narratives. The effect of these sources and the popular myth they created will be examined in relation to film and TV representations of Catherine in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. This dissertation examines two specific examples of recent popular culture through film and TV, La Reine Margot (1994) and The Serpent Queen (2022). Overall, arguing the detrimental effect of Catherine de’ Medici’s gender in the context of the French Salic law, and her Italian heritage in a xenophobic sixteenth century France, on her historical reputation.
Course
BA (Hons) History (with Placement Year)