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Author: Andrew Cowell Publisher: Boydell & Brewer ISBN: 1843841231 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 208
Book Description
A major reconsideration of the relationship between warrior aristocrats, epics, and heroes in medieval culture. The process of identity formation during the central Middle Ages (10th-12th centuries) among the warrior aristocracy was fundamentally centered on the paired practices of gift giving and violent taking, inextricably linked elements of the same basic symbolic economy. These performative practices cannot be understood without reference to a concept of the sacred, which anchored and governed the performances, providing the goal and rationale of social and military action. After focussing on anthropological theory, social history, and chronicles, the author turns to the "literary" persona of the hero as seen in the epic. He argues that the hero was specifically a narrative touchstone used for reflection on the nature and limits of aggressive identity formation among the medieval warrior elite; the hero can be seen, from a theoretical perspective, as a "supplement" to his own society, who both perfectly incarnated its values but also, in attaining full integrity, short-circuited the very mechanisms of identity formation and reciprocity which undergirded the society. The book shows that the relationship between warriors, heroes, and their opponents (especially Saracens) must be understood as a complex, tri-partite structure - not a simple binary opposition - in which the identity of each constituent depends on the other two. ANDREW COWELL isAssociate Professor of the Department of French and Italian, and the Department of Linguistics, at the University of Colorado.
Author: Andrew Cowell Publisher: Boydell & Brewer ISBN: 1843841231 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 208
Book Description
A major reconsideration of the relationship between warrior aristocrats, epics, and heroes in medieval culture. The process of identity formation during the central Middle Ages (10th-12th centuries) among the warrior aristocracy was fundamentally centered on the paired practices of gift giving and violent taking, inextricably linked elements of the same basic symbolic economy. These performative practices cannot be understood without reference to a concept of the sacred, which anchored and governed the performances, providing the goal and rationale of social and military action. After focussing on anthropological theory, social history, and chronicles, the author turns to the "literary" persona of the hero as seen in the epic. He argues that the hero was specifically a narrative touchstone used for reflection on the nature and limits of aggressive identity formation among the medieval warrior elite; the hero can be seen, from a theoretical perspective, as a "supplement" to his own society, who both perfectly incarnated its values but also, in attaining full integrity, short-circuited the very mechanisms of identity formation and reciprocity which undergirded the society. The book shows that the relationship between warriors, heroes, and their opponents (especially Saracens) must be understood as a complex, tri-partite structure - not a simple binary opposition - in which the identity of each constituent depends on the other two. ANDREW COWELL isAssociate Professor of the Department of French and Italian, and the Department of Linguistics, at the University of Colorado.
Author: Maurice Keen Publisher: A&C Black ISBN: 1852850876 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 279
Book Description
The literature of chivalry and of courtly love has left an indelible impression on western ideas. What is less clear is how far the contemporary warrior aristocracy took this literature to heart and how far its ideals had influence in practice, especially in war. These are questions that Maurice Keen is uniquely qualified to answer. This book is a collection of Maurice Keen's articles and deals with both the ideas of chivalry and the reality of warfare. He discusses brotherhood-in-arms, courtly love, crusades, heraldry, knighthood, the law of arms, tournaments and the nature of nobility, as well as describing the actual brutality of medieval warfare and the lure of plunder. While the standards set by chivalric codes undoubtedly had a real, if intangible, influence on the behaviour of contemporaries, chivalry's idealisation of the knight errant also enhanced the attraction of war, endorsing its horrors with a veneer of acceptability.
Author: Andrew Ayton Publisher: Boydell & Brewer ISBN: 9780851157399 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 324
Book Description
Dr Ayton has transformed understanding of Edward III's armies - compulsory reading for anyone interested in the Hundred Years War. WAR IN HISTORY [Michael Prestwich] The mounted, armoured knight is one of the most potent symbols of medieval civilisation; indeed, for much of the middle ages the armoured warhorse was what defined a man as a member of the military class. However, despite the status of the knightly warrior in medieval society, the military service of the later medieval English aristocracy remains an unaccountably neglected subject, and the warhorse itself has never attracted a major study based upon archival sources. This book seeks to open up new fields of research: it focuses on the horse inventories, documents which offer detailed lists of men-at-arms and their appraised warhorses, the valuation of which is a measure of its owner's social and military status. Dr Ayton is primarily concerned with the inventories and related records for Edward III's reign, a period which witnessed significant changes in the organisation of the English fighting machine. Thedocuments produced during this period of `military revolution' cast valuable light on the character and attitudes of the aristocratic military community at a time when its traditional role was in the course of re-evaluation. Dr ANDREW AYTON is senior lecturer in history at the University of Hull.
Author: Gerd Althoff Publisher: ISBN: 9789004408487 Category : Alemanya Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
In Rules and Rituals in Medieval Power Games Gerd Althoff highlights the great impact of unwritten rules (Spielregeln) and rituals in establishing order in prestate societies. He underpins this view with new examples and insights taken from the German perspective and thus offers a model suitable for comparison with other societies.
Author: William E. Deal Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 0195331265 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 433
Book Description
This book is an introduction the Japanese history, culture, and society from 1185 - the beginning of the Kamakura period - through the end of the Edo period in 1868.
Author: Walter Wadiak Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess ISBN: 0268101213 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 200
Book Description
In Savage Economy: The Returns of Middle English Romance, Walter Wadiak traces the evolution of the medieval English romance from its thirteenth-century origins to 1500, and from a genre that affirmed aristocratic identity to one that appealed more broadly to an array of late medieval communities. Essential to this literary evolution is the concept and practice of “noble” gift-giving, which binds together knights and commoners in ways that both echo and displace the notorious violence of many of these stories. Wadiak begins with the assumption that “romance” names a particular kind of chivalric fantasy to which violence is central, just as violence was instrumental to the formation and identity of the medieval warrior aristocracy. A traditional view is that the violence of romance stories is an expression of aristocratic privilege wielded by a military caste in its relations with one another as well as with those lower on the social scale. In this sense, violence is the aristocratic gift that underwrites and reaffirms the feudal power of a privileged group, with the noble gift performing the symbolic violence on which romance depends in order to present itself as both a coded threat and an expression of chivalric values. Well-known examples of romance in Middle English, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, are considered alongside more “popular” examples of the genre to demonstrate a surprising continuity of function across a range of social contexts. Wadiak charts a trajectory from violence aimed directly at securing feudal domination to the subtler and more diffuse modes of coercion that later English romances explore. Ultimately, this is a book about the ways in which romance lives on as an idea, even as the genre itself begins to lose ground at the close of the Middle Ages.
Author: Constance Brittain Bouchard Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 1501713299 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 215
Book Description
Medieval society was dominated by its knights and nobles. The literature created in medieval Europe was primarily a literature of knightly deeds, and the modern imagination has also been captured by these leaders and warriors. This book explores the nature of the nobility, focusing on France in the High Middle Ages (11th-13th centuries). Constance Brittain Bouchard examines their families; their relationships with peasants, townspeople, and clerics; and the images of them fashioned in medieval literary texts. She incorporates throughout a consideration of noble women and the nobility's attitude toward women.Research in the last two generations has modified and expanded modern understanding of who knights and nobles were; how they used authority, war, and law; and what position they held within the broader society. Even the concepts of feudalism, courtly love, and chivalry, once thought to be self-evident aspects of medieval society, have been seriously questioned. Bouchard presents bold new interpretations of medieval literature as both reflecting and criticizing the role of the nobility and their behavior. She offers the first synthesis of this scholarship in accessible form, inviting general readers as well as students and professional scholars to a new understanding of aristocratic role and function.
Author: David R. Wyatt Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004175334 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 481
Book Description
Modern sensibilities have clouded historical views of slavery, perhaps more so than any other medieval social institution. Anachronistic economic rationales and notions about the progression of European civilisation have immeasurably distorted our view of slavery in the medieval context. As a result historians have focussed their efforts upon explaining the disappearance of this medieval institution rather than seeking to understand it. This book highlights the extreme cultural/social significance of slavery for the societies of medieval Britain and Ireland c. 800-1200. Concentrating upon the lifestyle, attitudes and motivations of the slave-holders and slave-raiders, it explores the violent activities and behavioural codes of Britain and Ireland s warrior-centred societies, illustrating the extreme significance of the institution of slavery for constructions of power, ethnic identity and gender.
Author: David Crouch Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317878264 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
For 300 years separate and mutually uncomprehending English and French historiographies have confused the history of medieval aristocracy. Unpicking the basic assumptions behind both national traditions, this book explains them, reconciles them and offers entirely new ways to take the study of aristocracy forward in both England and France. The Birth of Nobility analyses the enormous international field of publications on the subject of medieval aristocracy, breaking it down into four key debates: noble conduct, noble lineage, noble class and noble power. Each issue is subjected to a thorough review by comparing current scholarship with what a vast range of historical source material actually says. It identifies the points of divergence in the national traditions of each of these debates and highlights where they have been mutually incomprehensible. For students studying medieval Europe.
Author: Andrew Cowell
Author: Andrew Cowell
Author: Maurice Hugh Keen
Author: Maurice Keen
Author: Andrew Ayton
Author: Gerd Althoff
Author: William E. Deal
Author: Walter Wadiak
Author: Constance Brittain Bouchard
Author: David R. Wyatt
Author: David Crouch