CALL FOR PAPERS: 'Perspectives on Chivalry: Medieval to Modern'

The Encyclopedia of British Medieval Literature, 2017

The Encyclopedia of British Medieval Literature, ed. Robert Rouse and Sian Echard (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 462-469.

History Compass, 2018

Chivalry was the dominant ethos of the lay elite in high and late medieval Europe, including in Italy. Chivalric ideology helped to shape the mentality, lifestyle, and identity of nobles, knights, and men-at-arms and to reinforce their claims to social, political, and economic superiority. While scholars have spilled considerable ink studying chivalry's powerful influence in northwestern Europe, especially in England and France, there has been far less interest in the topic among historians of Italy. This article will examine the existing historiography on chivalry in one region of the peninsula, Tuscany, with a particular focus on the city of Florence. The traditional interpretation of chivalry found in these works is that of an ideology predominantly courtly and ceremonial in nature. This article will also introduce the newest scholarship which challenges this conceptualization of Tuscan and Florentine chivalry and offers a new interpretation that is in line with the most recent studies of chivalry in the general European context. 1 | INTRODUCTION Chivalry was the dominant ethos of the lay elite in high and late medieval Europe. It was not, however, a monolithic ideology but rather a pantheon of ideas and ideals, often in tension with one another, that helped to shape the mentality, lifestyle, and identity of nobles, knights, and men-at-arms and reinforce their claims to social, political, and economic superiority. The specific composition and influence of chivalric ideology varied according to the geographic and chronological context, but the foundational pillars of chivalry were the same: prowess, valor, honor, largesse, and loyalty. As a result, chivalric practitioners from across Europe and across the centuries had far more in common with one another than they did with those who operated outside of chivalric cultural circles (Kaeuper, 2016). Despite chivalry's centrality to the dominant group in medieval European society, it was not until after the "rediscovery" of cultural history in the 1970s that scholars moved beyond the heavily romanticized early interpretations of chivalry

IU Journal of Undergraduate Research

This paper examines the role of chivalry in two of Marie de France’s lais, Guigemar and Bisclavret. One of the most studied authors of the Medieval period, Marie de France’s works reveal the values, anxieties, and societal dynamics of her time by both adhering to and pushing against literary norms. Guigemar and Bisclavret present near-perfect examples of knighthood, save for two flaws: Guigemar has no love for women, and Bisclavret is a werewolf. The treatment of these knights and their peculiarities reveals the strict expectations of masculinity and the risks of breaking from them. I pay particular attention to the importance of humility in chivalric masculinity and the ways in which their peculiarities affect their relationships, particularly with other men. When placed in conversation, these stories show that the main role of chivalry was to secure the relationships between men that formed the basis of Medieval society and that, for this reason, humility was one of the most impor...

postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies is a cross-disciplinary, peer-reviewed journal in medieval studies that aims to bring the medieval and modern into productive critical relation. The journal will work to develop a presentminded medieval studies in which contemporary events, issues, ideas, problems, objects, and texts serve as triggers for critical investigations of the Middle Ages. Further, we are concerned to illuminate the deep historical structures -mental, linguistic, social, cultural, aesthetic, religious, political, sexual, and the like -that underlie contemporary thought and life, and therefore, we are also interested in attending to the question of the relation of the medieval to the modern (and vice versa) in different times and places. We want to also demonstrate the important value of medieval studies and the ongest possible historical perspectives to the ongoing development of contemporary critical and cultural theories r| t 'i? n ] ain under~historicize d. Finally, we will advocate for and support the continuing development, from any the Middle C A Plinary direCtions ' of historicist . materialist, comparatist, and theoretical approaches to the subjects of Articles should be submitted online at: http://pmed.msubmit.net. Full instructions for authors and information about

Martin Aurell Chivalric culture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Culture can be defined in two ways, one broad and one narrow. The term includes, firstly, information, practice and technique that allow mankind to control nature and a specific group to adapt to global society. It refers, secondly, to the erudite knowledge, to the artistic works and to any other form of science or creation of the human mind, considered as superior. Each of these two definitions seems to fit in a specific field of human sciences. More extensive, the first one concerns the sociology and even more 'cultural' anthropology, while the second, smaller, is rather used by historians of literature, of art and of science. This second definition of culture is reserved for the most sophisticated forms of knowledge and should not be confused, for example, with the gestures of manual work, with the structures of kinship or with the feast, which are so essential in the ethnological studies. In the categories, as convenient as misleading, in which each academic science tended to close, barely thirty years ago, the broader definition referred to material, popular and oral culture, and the narrow one to spiritual, elitist and writing culture. Nowadays, however, the interdisciplinary method shows us how these epistemological barriers are artificial and reductive 1. They should be abolished to restore the historical phenomenon throughout its life, its deepness and its richness. The medievalist studying chivalry would also be as wrong to move away from the anthropological definition of culture than from its elitist definition. He has indeed to apprehend his object as a whole, which includes values, attitudes, representations, ideology or literary and artistic creations, which he should not separate. For him, it is so important to know how the knight read or wrote a novel, made war, educated children, told a story, listen to a sermon or attended Mass. In other words, we need to know how he held his pen or his Psalter, but also his spear, the sleeve of his lover, his hawk or his spoon. Nonetheless, it would not be reasonable for us to level all these gestures, as if they were equally important in the evolution of the group of knights, who, because of their dominant position, acted as a model for lesser social categories. Perhaps a prisoner of the prejudices of his own socio-professional category, the author of this article believes that the intellectual activities of the aristocratic warriors deserve special treatment, mainly because they mark, in twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a shift in the evolution of Europe. Western culture owes much, including in its modernity, to the literacy of knighthood. Therefore, the literate knight (miles litteratus) will be particularly in the spotlight here. Like any historical object, chivalric culture can only be apprehended from documentary evidence that guides widely the researcher. However, for the Middle Ages, these sources are mainly produced by clerics, who describe in Latin, their elitist language of written communication, some practices that, like war, are prohibited to them. But even if they have received the tonsure and the sacred orders, these intellectuals are not strangers to the realities of chivalry. They only approach them according to mental categories and ecclesiastical values that distort necessarily their descriptions and their narrations, and more their judgments about their actors. While thinking and communicating about chivalry, they configure its ideological boundaries, influencing its evolution. Like them, some rare knights took the pen to write in vernacular: Bertran de Born, Robert de Boron, Snorri Sturluson, Wolfram von Eschenbach… Others chose to sponsor and guide the work of authors and jugglers. Children of William Marshal fostered John Early to write the biography of their father in his memory and in their PAGE 1 1 Some excellent studies about these interactions between the literary culture and the so called cultural culture can be found in Oral Art Forms and their Passage into Writing, ed. E. Mundal, J. Wellendorf, Njalsgade, 2008.

2020

MA Dissertation (2020) Chivalry in the Middle Ages has often been defined as ‘the religious and moral system of behavior that the perfect knight was expected to follow’.1 However, singular definitions of chivalry should be disregarded because displays of medieval masculinity and chivalry were a complicated mixture of social conditions, institutional influence, and individual motivation. Using fictional and 'factual' literature, the dissertation attempts to understand the multiplicity of masculinity and individual knightly motivations caused by competing factual and fictional depictions of chivalry. Overall, histories of chivalry and masculinity between c.1350-c.1410 in France have been treated singularly for one core reason: the ideal qualities of chivalry have been treated as the reality for all-knights, when in fact chivalric ideologies were unique to individuals and overlapped in both factual and fictional literature of the period.

Cross, crown and community: religion, government and culture in early modern England, 1400-1800, 2004

2015

2018

Chivalry was the dominant ethos of the lay elite in high and late medieval Europe, including in Italy. Chivalric ideology helped to shape the mentality, lifestyle, and identity of nobles, knights, and men-at-arms and to reinforce their claims to social, political, and economic superiority. While scholars have spilled considerable ink studying chivalry's powerful influence in northwestern Europe, especially in England and France, there has been far less interest in the topic among historians of Italy. This article will examine the existing historiography on chivalry in one region of the peninsula, Tuscany, with a particular focus on the city of Florence. The traditional interpretation of chivalry found in these works is that of an ideology predominantly courtly and ceremonial in nature. This article will also introduce the newest scholarship which challenges this conceptualization of Tuscan and Florentine chivalry and offers a new interpretation that is in line with the most recent studies of chivalry in the general European context.

2019