“The Liber Manualis does everything mirrors for princes are meant to do. It counsels and consoles its reader, and abases its author, stressing her unworthiness before God and her march toward death. But it is also something more than a dry, serious work of moral instruction: Dhuoda refuses to remove herself from the text. Barely a page goes by without a glimpse of the author somewhere—in her love of puns, acrostics, and numerology; her predilection for tossing in biographical details; the curious extended metaphors; her aside about how difficult she finds writing. When those moments hit, Liber Manualis doesn’t read like a book about how to be a nobleman but a book about what it’s like to be Dhuoda. Working within the conventions of the mirrors, she finds a way to create a self-portrait—not to indulge her ego, but to provide William with something that will keep her alive in his mind, a keepsake as intimate and evocative as a lock of hair. ”
A Mother’s Ninth-Century Manual on How to Be a Man
ALBERT EDELFELT, QUEEN BLANCHE OF NORWAY AND SWEDEN WITH PRINCE (LATER KING) HACON, 1877.
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