Knights Archive
-
Chivalry and Public Disorder in Thirteenth-Century Florence
Posted on May 13, 2013 | No CommentsThe was the second of two fabulous papers given at the my first session on Medieval violence. Whereas the first paper in this series looked at violence in the university setting, this one tackled violence in an elite sphere - Florentine knights and their retinues. -
War and Peace in the Works of Chaucer and his Contemporaries
Posted on May 1, 2013 | No CommentsBut whenever authors of work on chivalry and war during the Middle Ages have tried to determine the exact historical influence and result of chivalric ideals, they have run into difficulties. That is why there are such widely varying hypotheses concerning the 'Golden Age' of chivalry. -
Chaucer’s Arthuriana
Posted on March 18, 2013 | No CommentsThe majority of medieval scholars, including Roger Sherman Loomis, argue that the popularity of the Arthurian legend in England was therefore on the wane in the latter half of the fourteenth century; as a result, the major writers of the period, such as John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer, refrained from penning anything beyond the occasional reference to King Arthur and his court. -
Interpreting Warfare and Knighthood in Late Medieval France: Writers and Their Sources in the Reign of King Charles VI (1380-1422)
Posted on March 10, 2013 | No CommentsRomances provided the basis of a particular kind of view of knighthood and warfare that was very influential on other literature concerning knights and warfare, as much as it was on real life practices and attitudes. -
Traditions of Courtly Love and the Canterbury Tales
Posted on February 24, 2013 | No CommentsChaucer uses both common and courtly love in the Canterbury Tales. His pilgrims represent nearly every level of the social scale and range anywhere from a knight to a miller to a parson to a pardoner. Thererfore, their status will determine what kind of tale they will tell. -
Mi Suete Leuedi, Her Mi Béne: The Power and Patronage of the Heroine in Middle English Romance
Posted on February 10, 2013 | No CommentsThe Middle English Romances are somewhat difficult to study as a group. In order to examine these works accurately, one must take into consideration other literature produced at the same tirne, as well as that which preceded it. -
Oh, for Shame: Public Perception and Punishment in Chretien’s Cliges
Posted on February 9, 2013 | No CommentsTo develop this argument, a basic understanding of medieval society's conventions is necessary in order to outline the parameters of this honor/shame culture. -
The Making of Men, not Masters: Right Order and Lay Masculinity According to Dhuoda and Nithard
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsSetting Nithard’s and Dhuoda’s works in dialogue with one another, this study seeks to explore how the conflicts of the early 840s may have triggered reevaluations of contemporary ideals regarding lay masculinty. At the core of both authors’ works is the understanding that the problems the realm was facing at that time were primarily due to no- blemen’s expression of unmanly modes of conduct. -
The genesis of chivalry project receives £137,000 in funding
Posted on January 11, 2013 | No CommentsDavid Crouch of the University of Hull will be able to explore the origins of chivalry in the Middle Ages after being award a Research Fellowship of £137,629 from the Leverhulme Trust. -
Lay Writers and the Politics of Theology in Medieval England From the Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries
Posted on January 3, 2013 | No CommentsMy intention is not to continue the discourse on such practices but to analyze narrative content in relation to the politics of theology that had an impact on lay writers and their artistic creativity concerning the search for selfhood from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. -
Sir Thomas Gray’s Scalacronica: a medieval chronicle and its historical and literary context
Posted on December 20, 2012 | No CommentsSir Thomas Gray's Scalacronica is almost unique amongst medieval English chronicles in having been written by a knight, and it is therefore surprising that so little work has been done on it; this thesis attempts to remedy that omission. -
Fools, Devils, and Alchemy: Secular Images in the Monastery
Posted on December 9, 2012 | No CommentsThe fool is one of the most popular and stable character types throughout cultures and times. This is especially true of medieval Europe. The fool, sometimes a jester, sometimes a clown or a trickster, is always recognizable through his abnormal appearance. -
Hot Holiday Reads!
Posted on November 23, 2012 | No CommentsPut down those turkey left-overs and check out some of these hot holiday reads! -
“At the Tip of a Sword”: A Study of the Introduction of the Knight into Anglo-Saxon England
Posted on November 21, 2012 | No CommentsNevertheless the introduction of the knight into England still remains a controversial topic of discussion among military historians, since the people who inhabited England prior to 1066 were part of warrior culture as well: the Anglo-Saxons. -
The Knighting of Henry, son of William the Conqueror, in 1086
Posted on November 19, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper was part of SESSION VIII: Power & Politics in the Long Twelfth Century, at the Haskins Conference at Boston College. -
Salutare Animas Nostras: The Ideologies Behind the Foundation of the Templars
Posted on November 18, 2012 | No CommentsThe meteoric rise of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon (more commonly known as the Knights Templar) and their equally swift fall has fueled fanciful tales and scholarly research. The order promoted their mythological origins and the extreme charges leveled against them by Philip IV of France (1285-1314) created an atmosphere of speculation. -
How to be a Man, Though Female: Changing Sex in Medieval Romance
Posted on November 12, 2012 | No CommentsGender participates in a series of taxonomies that structure the social order, and it therefore participates in processes beyond itself, such as Christianity and knighthood, which are equally about identity within the world of chivalric romance. Therefore, the inscription of one often helps to define the other. -
SESSION III: The Medieval Experience of Siege
Posted on November 6, 2012 | No CommentsThese are two papers from SESSION III: The Medieval Experience of Siege given at Boston College's Haskin's Conference. The first paper examined knightly interaction during sieges and the second paper delved into the actions of the besieged and besiegers during times of war. -
Religion, Warfare and Business in Fifteenth Century Rhodes
Posted on October 25, 2012 | No CommentsHow did a military-monastic order manage the resources of an island commercially asimportant as that of Rhodes while overcoming the limitations due to its patrimonial struc-tureto cover their defensive needs? In this essay weattempt to answer this question interms of practice and in the light of relationsthatthe Knights maintained with two distinctgroups of merchants: the Catalan-Aragonese and the Florentines. -
Mandeville’s Intolerance: The Contest for Souls and Sacred Sites in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
Posted on October 3, 2012 | No CommentsWhile Chaucer‟s knight has traveled to and fought in Spain, North Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia Minor, Sir John claims to have visited the entire known world from Constantinople and the Holy Land to the farthest reaches of Asia. -
Maculate Conceptions
Posted on September 30, 2012 | No CommentsFor the greater part of human history...disease has been understood in terms of its manifestations on the outside of the body. more than any other sign, t has been spots that have signified the onset of disease... -
Monstrous transformations: loyalty and community in four medieval poems
Posted on September 23, 2012 | No CommentsI will examine two forms of transformation, the werewolf transformation and the monstrous human transformation, both of which feature shape shifters who presumably cannot be trusted -
What is Medieval Times?
Posted on September 10, 2012 | No CommentsWhat is Medieval Times? Medievalists.net decided to see for ourselves and go to the Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament in Toronto, Canada. Here is our report on the show: -
Practical Chivalry in the Twelfth Century: The Case of William Marshal
Posted on August 24, 2012 | No CommentsWilliam Marshal (c.1147-1219) is among the most extraordinary individuals in medieval English history. -
‘Images of the Other: Venice’s Perception of the Knights of Malta’
Posted on August 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe hostile perception which Venice generally entertained of the Knights Hospitallers on Rhodes and Malta was not an attitude which the Republic secretly assumed and secretly endeavoured with much effort to disguise.
