Poetry of Politics

Carmen seu historia Carolo II cognomento Parvo §Rege Hungariae is a medieval account on the §political troubles under the reign of Queen Mary §(1382-1395), the only queen who ever ruled Hungary §in the Middle Ages. It is a 560-line Latin §hexametric epic, written in 1388 by the Venetian §poet, notary and chronicler, Lorenzo Monaci, who §fulfilled diplomatic missions in Hungary on multiple §occasions.§Both the poem and the dedicatory letter prefacing it §have been extensively used by scholars as historical §sources; no one, however, has ever analyzed it as a §literary product. This thesis deals with Monaci §Carmen as a literary construct. As such, the image §it conveys about Queen Mary, as well as about late §fourteenth-century Hungarian events, have been §contextualized and carefully deconstructed. §The book explores three different contexts: Monaci s §Venetian bias; Hungarian-Venetian diplomatic and §political relations; and the problems of female rule §in Angevin Hungary. The analysis deconstructs the §contrastive images of Queen Mary and her rival, §Charles of Durazzo in the Carmen, an outstanding §Gesamtkunstwerk of medieval historical literature.