Editing Emma of Normandy (section)

==The ''Encomium Emmæ Reginae'' or ''Gesta Cnutonis Regis''==
[[File:Courtenaykompendiet.png|thumb|right|The incipit page of a 14th-century revised version of the ''Encomium Emmae Reginae'' manuscript found in 2008, the [[Courtenay Compendium]]]]
The ''Encomium'' is divided into three parts, the first of which deals with Sweyn Forkbeard and his conquest of England. The second focuses on Cnut and relates the defeat of "Princes" Æthelred (never named) and Edmund, Cnut's marriage to Emma (again, without mentioning she had been the wife of Æthelred), and Cnut's kingship. The third addresses the events after Cnut's death; Emma's involvement in the seizing of the royal treasury, and the treachery of Earl Godwin. It begins by addressing Emma, "May our Lord Jesus Christ preserve you, O Queen, who excel all those of your sex in the amiability of your way of life."{{sfn|Campbell|Keynes|1998|p=5}} Emma is "the most distinguished woman of her time for delightful beauty and wisdom."{{sfn|Campbell|Keynes|1998|p=33}}

===Scholarly debate===
This flattery, writes Elizabeth M. Tyler, is "part of a deliberate attempt to intervene, on Emma's behalf, in the politics of the Anglo-Danish court,"{{sfn|Tyler|2005|pp=149–179}} a connotation which an 11th-century audience would have understood. This proves to be a direct contrast to earlier evaluations of the text, such as the introduction to the 1998 reprint of Alistair Campbell's 1949 edition in which Simon Keynes remarks: 
{{blockquote|... While the modern reader who expects the Encomium to provide a portrait of a great and distinguished queen at the height of her power will be disappointed, and might well despair of an author who could suppress, misrepresent, and garble what we know or think to have been the truth.|source={{harvnb|Campbell|Keynes|1998|p=xvii}} }}
Felice Lifshitz, in her seminal study of the ''Encomium'' comments:
{{blockquote|... To Alistair Campbell and to see C.N.L. Brooke the omission was explicable as a matter of 'artistic necessity' and of Emma's personal vanity ... both scholars subscribed to the older view, which afforded the Encomium only literary significance as a panegyric to individual or dynasty, but saw no political import.|source={{harvnb|Lifshitz|1989|pp=39–50}} }}

===Manuscripts===
Prior to May 2008 only one copy of the ''Encomium'' was believed to exist. However, a late-14th-century manuscript, the [[House of Courtenay|Courtenay Compendium]], was discovered in the [[Devon Record Office]], where it had languished since the 1960s. According to a report by the UK Arts Council, "The most significant item [within the text] for British history is the Encomium Emma Reginae ... It is highly probable that the present manuscript represents the most complete witness to the revised version of the Encomium". The manuscript was put up for auction in December 2008, and purchased for £600,000 (5.2 million Danish kroner) on behalf of the [[Royal Library, Denmark]].{{sfn|Bech-Danielsen|2008}} Unlike the ''Liber Vitae,'' the compendium does not contain any images of Emma.
The [[New Minster Liber Vitae|New Minster ''Liber Vitae]], now in the [[British Library]], was completed in 1030, shortly before Cnut's death in 1035. The frontispiece depicts "King Cnut and Queen Emma presenting a cross to the altar of New Minster, Winchester." Stafford in her visual exegesis of the portrait states, "it is not clear whether we should read it as a representation of a powerful woman or a powerless one."{{sfn|Stafford|2001|p=3}} In one portrait, each facet of Emma's role as sovereign is displayed; that of a dutiful wife and influential queen.

It has been suggested that the poem ''[[Semiramis]]'', possibly written in 1017 by [[Warner of Rouen]] at the court of Emma's brother, [[Richard II, Duke of Normandy|Richard, Duke of Normandy]], and dedicated to her brother, Archbishop [[Robert II (archbishop of Rouen)|Robert]], is a contemporary satire ridiculing Emma's relation with Cnut.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Van Houts|first=Elisabeth M.C.|date=January 1992|title=A Note on Jezebel and Semiramis, Two Latin Norman Poems from the Early Eleventh Century|journal=The Journal of Medieval Latin|volume=02|pages=18–24|doi=10.1484/j.jml.2.303969|issn=0778-9750}}</ref>

Emma is also depicted in a number of later medieval texts, such as the 13th-century ''Life of Edward the Confessor'' ([[Cambridge University Library]] MS. Ee.3.59) and a 14th-century roll, ''Genealogy of the English Kings, Genealogical Chronicle of the English Kings''.

Emma and her sons Edward and Alfred are characters in the anonymous Elizabethan play ''[[Edmund Ironside (play)|Edmund Ironside]]'', sometimes considered an early work by [[William Shakespeare]].