When George Lucas wrote up the screen play that would become Episode IV: A New Hope, he would make use of medieval history to help create his galaxy far, far away.
Five Things to Love About A Knight’s Tale
February 27, 2014 By
Was it really just a sports movie set in the past? Yes. Was it edited until the plot seems a little less-than-coherent? Yes. But are there things we can love about it? Absolutely.
Analyzing History: Bertran de Born – Innocent Poet or Inciter of Revolt
February 22, 2014 By
While words are powerful tools that can invoke emotions ranging from jubilation to revulsion, could they be the cause of a rebellion against Henry II of England by his children and wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine? Could the words of a mere troubadour drive the revolt of a family against their king?
The “Discrete Occupational Identity” of Chaucer’s Knyght
February 22, 2014 By
Popular critical opinion favors reading the pilgrim Knyght of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales as the representative of the idealized chivalric knight; however, the pilgrim Knyght bears the hallmark of the early professional soldier that began to evolve as early as the eleventh century.
The Knights in the Middle Ages of England
February 14, 2014 By
Chivalry was a special phenomenon in the Middle Ages of Europe, and was also a part of the military system in the Middle Ages of Europe.
Men Who Talk about Love in Late Medieval Spain: Hugo de Urriés and Egalitarian Married Life
February 13, 2014 By
In the last third of the fifteenth century, Hugo de Urriés’s work can offer the modern reader a very rare and informative perspective from the points of view of social history and history of ideas.
St George’s Day: A Cultural History
January 27, 2014 By
The modern celebration of St. George’s Day, frequently associated with intense English nationalism, grew out of a religious feast that commemorated a Middle-Eastern individual who died protesting an intolerant empire.
Parzival, the perfect Medieval hero?
January 11, 2014 By
When we now think of knights, we automatically think of knights in shining armours, saving damsels in distress while killing dragons and other mythical creatures. But is this image we have of these heroes correct? Was the Medieval hero really just a tough guy who saved beautiful ladies and killed the ´bad guys´. In this paper I will try to give a standard description of what a Medieval hero really was. After which I will try to determine if Parzival really was a medieval hero, compared to the standards that I have tried to set.
Chaucer’s reading list: Sir Thopas, Auchinleck, and Middle English romances in translation
December 29, 2013 By
One frustration of engaging in any branch of European medieval studies as an academic pursuit is that few claim expertise about the ancient or Roman worlds, but seemingly everyone on an internet discussion forum believes him or herself knowledgeable about the medieval period, usually based on patently false beliefs.
The Unicorn, St Andrew and the Thistle: Was there an Order of Chivalry in Late Medieval Scotland?
December 26, 2013 By
A common expression of kingship throughout Europe in the fifteenth century was the founding of orders of chivalry. Whether the Scottish crown also attempted to appropriate the ideologies of chivalry in this way is important to establish.
“The Taint of a Fault”: Purgatory, Relativism and Humanism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
November 21, 2013 By
“The Taint of a Fault”: Purgatory, Relativism and Humanism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Bill Phillips Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, No. 17 (2004) Abstract Far from being a poem about the chivalric code, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is essentially concerned with religion. The Romance genre is used to reveal the shortcomings […]
Transvestite Knights: Men and Women Cross-dressing in Medieval Literature
September 29, 2013 By
In this thesis, I will look at mainly French and German texts from the 12th to the 15th centuries which deal with the subject of cross-dressers in the decidedly masculine domain of the knight. There are many tales of cross-dressing, particularly of women, but the concept of men dressing as women while jousting, and women dressing as knights, brings up several questions about the clothes, what it meant to be male and female, and how cross-dressing could be viewed on the tournament field.
An Examination of the Family in ‘The Tale of Sir Gareth’
September 27, 2013 By
This thesis investigates the theme of family interactions within Malory‘s ―Tale of Sir Gareth,‖ examining the tale itself as well as looking at several analogous Fair Unknown stories in order to determine if the theme is Malory‘s own or if it could have come from a probable source.
Knighthood in later medieval Italy
August 6, 2013 By
There is a clear reason for this general discounting of Italian knighthood in the later Middle Ages. The traditional focus of northern Italian historiography being cities and civic life, knighthood has struggled to find a place in the world of communes and city-states, merchants and markets.
The Dragon and the Storm The Saracen anti-knight in Orlando furioso and Gerusalemme liberata
August 2, 2013 By
The Dragon and the Storm The Saracen anti-knight in Orlando furioso and Gerusalemme liberata Cam Lindley Cross University of Chicago, March 8 (2011) Abstract When Peter the Venerable commissioned Robert of Ketton to translate the Qur’an in 1142 CE, under the title Lex Mahumet pseudoprophete, it was with done for the express purpose of refuting Islamic doctrine […]
Organized Collective Violence in Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Tuscan Countryside: Some Case Studies from Central and North Eastern Tuscany
July 22, 2013 By
Violence is often thought of as a characteristic of all medieval societies. How such societies chose to exercise this violence is therefore a good, and understudied, way into understanding the basic rules about how they worked. Concentrating on twelfth and thirteenth century Tuscany, my intention is to show that a specific form of violence, namely organized collective violence, was not an option available to all social groups within the medieval rural society of northern Italy…
Chivalry and Public Disorder in Thirteenth-Century Florence
May 13, 2013 By
The 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
May 1, 2013 By
But 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.
European Chivalry in the 1490s
April 1, 2013 By
This paper’s first goal is to give some idea of the atmosphere of the decade, of the pervasiveness of this chivalric element. Chivalry functioned as a medium for international understanding and communication, a common social, cultural, political, and even religious language.
Chaucer’s Arthuriana
March 18, 2013 By
The 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)
March 10, 2013 By
Romances 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
February 24, 2013 By
Chaucer 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
February 10, 2013 By
The 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
February 9, 2013 By
To 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
January 27, 2013 By
Setting 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.
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