My proposed project aims to study the ideology of queenship and representation of female power in Medieval Georgia under Queen Tamar. I attempt to trace various strategies which were used in different sources for the creation of an ideal female ruler’s image. The official image of Georgian queen was constructed through symbolic language of authority which was delivered to the audience by four communicative media: encomiastic narratives (Encomiastic secular biography and court poetry) coinage, royal charters, and royal imagery. The purposed chapter as a whole PhD thesis will be contextualized and discussed in relation to the Byzantine empire. Namely, I will put the Georgian ideology of queenship in comparative perspective with the Byzantine imperial ideology in order to understand the possible adoption of Byzantine methods of power representation by Georgian image makers.

A full-length study is available here.