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Rewriting the memory of a Queen

Literature plays a major role as a repository of transformable memory and as a terrain where collective identity can be shaped and negotiated. This paper looks at literary representations of Dido, Cleopatra and Elizabeth I: three queens, three figurations of power in its uneasy connection with the varied discourse of womanliness – to illustrate how they have entered the cultural memory of western civilisation, forging and re-forging its self-image. In a crucial passage of Roman history, Dido and Cleopatra are clearly linked in Virgil's founding epic of the Augustan age, and the Carthaginian queen's story is a significant tessera in the past created by the narration of Aeneas's adventures, contributing powerfully to the establishment of the image of Cleopatra still prevalent in western culture. In Tudor England, with reference both to the creation of Britain's ‘Roman’ past and to the vexing question of a female sovereign, once again literature plays a major role in highlighting the political implications of the two oriental queens, as they are re-signified to become – by analogy and/or opposition – figures of Elizabeth.