Narratives of Kingship in Eurasian Empires, 1300–1800 by Richard Van Leeuwen (review)

Van Leeuwen attempts to find parallels in the conceptions of Eurasian kingship during the premodern period, from 1300 to 1800, scouring fictional texts across Europe and Asia for possible "relationships, influences, and patterns of transmission" (3). He argues that these texts helped to integrate the power of a king into the popular imagination, thus enhancing claims to legitimacy. He chose texts that fall between categories—between elite and popular culture, between oral and written, between history and fiction, etc. The stories of the 1001 Nights cycle play an important role in his analysis as an "integrating matrix"—bringing together stories from Indian, Persian, and Arabic backgrounds mediated through medieval Islamic culture and the transmission into nineteenth-century Europe (5).

Van Leeuwen is careful to point out that he presents the texts in their historical context only occasionally. His goal is to analyze the texts as literary narratives, establishing their place in discourses of kingship and focusing on their vision of power and kingship. He warns that his analysis is not meant to be exhaustive but only to emphasize similarities and shared elements. He organizes the book by theme; each chapter examines a variety of sources through a specific type of content. In "Kings, Viziers, Concubines," Van Leeuwen discusses texts in which two figures—usually a minister and a woman—vie for a ruler's attentions. In "Gods, Demons, and Kings," he looks at ideal kings and their power over the supernatural; the figure of the vizier is crucial in these stories. In "Divine Insights, Cosmic Harmony," he continues the supernatural theme, at the nexus of royal authority, good government, and esoteric knowledge. In "The Knight and the King," he discusses chivalric romances, or stories of princes learning to be kings, and in "Kingship and Love," he studies how love leads kings to the perfection of their royal authority. The final chapter, "Unrequested Advice," concerns critiques of rulers. Throughout, Van Leeuwen reiterates that his aim is to pinpoint similarities in themes and episodes, not connections between the texts themselves.

Van Leeuwen draws his texts from every empire in Eurasia—China, India, Iran, Malaysia, Mamluk Egypt, and the Ottoman Empire, as well as France and Germany. His literary analyses of each text are highly successful. The problems arise when the texts are taken together. No matter how much Van Leeuwen writes that he is not arguing for connection or causality between the texts, his presentation of the common aspects in the narratives is so strong that it suggests some sort of cultural sharing or textual transmission. His choice to leave out historical context for the texts serves only to heighten the sense that they are actually connected in some way, despite his refusal to draw this conclusion. His repeated focus on the 1001 Nights—a text that itself demonstrates many layers of sharing and cross-cultural transmission—further suggests that the narratives presented in this book be considered in such a way.

When looking at individual texts, Van Leeuwen provides interesting insights about the perception and reification of kingship in the literatures of various cultures, times, and places. However, by bringing these texts together into a single analytical context, he ends up doing exactly what he sets out not to do.