Leonor de Aquitania

Reigns twice (of France, married to Louis VIII, and then of England, to Henry II), the long political career of Eleanor of Aquitaine, clearly exceptional for a woman of her time, was a real break with tradition masculine exercise and transmission of power, choice in marriage and artistic and literary patronage. Of great personality and beauty, with an incredible cultural and passionate preparation of the troubadours, she was the victim already in life of a black legend that presented her as a seductive, malicious, therefore, a powerful woman where they exist and heir to the Occitan culture of the that her grandfather Guillermo IX was a good example, Eleanor radically contravened the female model of her time. Drawing on a deep knowledge of the Middle Ages, Jean Flori refutes some of the commonly accepted ideas, explores the links between Chrétien de Troyes and the Plantagenet court, and traces the presence of Eleanor in the formidable body of Arthurian literature. Thus, this is a suggestive, penetrating book rich in deeply documented hypotheses, which studies in depth the reality of one of the women who, without a doubt, have marked history.