Urraca imagined: Representations of a Medieval Queen

Abstract

This article presents a double reflection on historical heuristics and hermeneutics: the multiple perspectives that each historical time casts on the past are the consequence of specific inheritance received from tradition and historical contexts which allow room for eventually original innovations. They all have equal moral and epistemological status, including our present view, if not in terms of the quality of the factual reconstruction or final aims, rather in terms of its nature. They all are reconstructions of a narrative representation with a specific semiotic, political and social dimension of the position, interests and understanding of groups in dialogue with their present and future audiences. The various historiographical views on the figure of the controversial Twelfth-century Queen Urraca of Castile and Leon is the case study used to put in context the continuities and discontinuities in the representation of the feminine gender, in order to perform an exercise in intellectual humility.