The Unicorn, St Andrew and the Thistle: Was there an Order of Chivalry in Late Medieval Scotland?
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
“The Taint of a Fault”: Purgatory, Relativism and Humanism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Bill Phillips Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, No.…
Transvestite Knights: Men and Women Cross-dressing in Medieval Literature
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’
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
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
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…
Organized Collective Violence in Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Tuscan Countryside: Some Case Studies from Central and North Eastern Tuscany
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
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
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
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
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.
Traditions of Courtly Love and the Canterbury Tales
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
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
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
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.
The genesis of chivalry project receives £137,000 in funding
David 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
My 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
Sir 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
The 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!
Put 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
Nevertheless 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
This 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
The 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.
SESSION III: The Medieval Experience of Siege
These 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.