Beyond the masculinity of kingship: The making of a modern queen in early second millennium Sri Lanka
By: Shirley, Bruno M
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Material type: 
BookPublisher: Modern Asian Studies Description: 58(2), Mar, 2024: p.485-511.Subject(s): Sri Lanka, Kingship, Masculinity, Gender, Colonial-modernity
In:
Modern Asian StudiesSummary: Modern historians have repeatedly cast Sri Lanka’s historical female monarchs as ‘queens’, without critically reflecting on the conceptual limits and nuances of that term. Through a close examination of sources from the early second millennium, and their reception by scholars from the colonial period onwards, I demonstrate that Sri Lanka’s female monarchs—particularly Līlāvatī of Poḷonnaruva (r. 1197–1200, 1209, and 1210)—engaged in a more creative and subversive performance of gender than modern ‘queenship’ allows. In particular, I argue, a discourse of kingship’s inherent masculinity, advanced in literary and didactic texts written primarily by male monastics, was too-willingly accepted by colonial-period scholars. Closer attention to the material evidence of Līlāvatī’s reign, however, challenges this discourse and further suggests a politics of gender beyond the binary.- Reproduced
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-asian-studies/article/beyond-the-masculinity-of-kingship-the-making-of-a-modern-queen-in-early-second-millennium-sri-lanka/F92F8EDD9A752F0DB8B4167652FEABAE
| Item type | Current location | Call number | Vol info | Status | Date due | Barcode |
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Articles
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Indian Institute of Public Administration | 58(2), Mar, 2024: p.485-511 | Available | AR133884 |
Modern historians have repeatedly cast Sri Lanka’s historical female monarchs as ‘queens’, without critically reflecting on the conceptual limits and nuances of that term. Through a close examination of sources from the early second millennium, and their reception by scholars from the colonial period onwards, I demonstrate that Sri Lanka’s female monarchs—particularly Līlāvatī of Poḷonnaruva (r. 1197–1200, 1209, and 1210)—engaged in a more creative and subversive performance of gender than modern ‘queenship’ allows. In particular, I argue, a discourse of kingship’s inherent masculinity, advanced in literary and didactic texts written primarily by male monastics, was too-willingly accepted by colonial-period scholars. Closer attention to the material evidence of Līlāvatī’s reign, however, challenges this discourse and further suggests a politics of gender beyond the binary.- Reproduced
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-asian-studies/article/beyond-the-masculinity-of-kingship-the-making-of-a-modern-queen-in-early-second-millennium-sri-lanka/F92F8EDD9A752F0DB8B4167652FEABAE
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