Agnes in Fiction
Until recent years, the image of Agnes perpetrated by Ernoul and William of Tyre has defined her treatment in history, especially of the 'popular' variety, the political agenda of these authors not being taken into account. This has affected her fictional portrayals. She has appeared in a number of novels dealing with twelfth-century Outremer - Zofia Kossak-Szczucka's Król trędowaty (The Leper King), Graham Shelby's The Knights of Dark Renown, and Cecelia Holland's Jerusalem - invariably as an aging harlot, her attractiveness varying from author to author. (Kossak depicts her as buxom and blowsy; Shelby, with particularly vicious misogyny, as a scrawny creature whom even Eraclius, whom he depicts as her lover, despises.)
Read more about this topic: Agnes Of Courtenay
Famous quotes containing the word fiction:
“A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send cheques to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)