Raoul de Cambrai
Raoul de Cambrai

Author: Sarah Kay

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 612

ISBN-13: 9780198158684

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Raoul de Cambrai is one of the most violent and passionate Old French poems of the cycle of barons in revolt. The three relations that structure medieval society - companionship, feudalism, and the family - are here seen in crisis. Conflicts of interest, and the competition for resources,result in social disintegration, wholesale loss of life, and the collapse of authority. The poem, probably composed around the turn of the thirteenth century, results from successive reworkings that weave a many-layered commentary on its own moral and political themes. This first edition for over ahundred years draws on important manuscript material unknown to the text's previous editors. It is prefaced by a scholarly introduction and accompanied by an annotated translation into English prose.

Anger's Past
Anger's Past

Author: Barbara H. Rosenwein

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 150171869X

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Books have rarely been written about the history of any emotion except love and shame, and this volume is the very first on the meaning of anger in the Middle Ages. Well aware of modern theories about the nature of anger, the authors consider the role of anger in the social lives and conceptual universes of a varied and significant cross-section of medieval people: monks, saints, kings, lords, and peasants. They are careful to distinguish between texts (the sources on which historians must rely) and the reality behind the texts. They are sensitive, as well, to the differences between ideals and normative behavior. The first eight essays in the volume focus on anger in the Latin West, while the last two turn to the fringes of Europe (the Celtic and Islamic worlds) for purposes of comparison. Barbara H. Rosenwein concludes the volume with an essay on modern conceptions of anger and their implications for understanding its role in the Middle Ages. The essays reveal much that is new about medieval rituals of honor and status and illuminate the rationales behind such seemingly irrational practices as cursing, feuding, and the punishment of blinding.

Disputing Strategies in Medieval Scandinavia
Disputing Strategies in Medieval Scandinavia

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2013-09-25

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 900422159X

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In Scandinavia the study of disputes is still a relatively new topic: The papers offered here discuss how conflicts were handled in Scandinavian societies in the Middle Ages before the emergence of strong centralized states. What strategies did people use to contest power, property, rights, honour, and other kinds of material or symbolic assets? Seven essays by Scandinavian scholars are supplemented by contributions from Stephen White, John Hudson and Gerd Althoff, to provide a new baseline for discussing both the strategies pursued in the political game and those used to settle local disputes. Using practice and process as key analytical concepts, these authors explore formal law and litigation in conjunction with non-formal legal proceedings such as out-of-court mediation, rituals, emotional posturing, and feuding. Their insights place the Northern medieval world in a European context of dispute studies. With introductory sections on social structure, sources materials, and the historiography of Scandinavian dispute studies. Contributors are Gerd Althoff, Catharina Andersson, Kim Esmark, Lars Ivar Hansen, Lars Hermanson, John Hudson, Auður G. Magnúsdóttir, Hans Jacob Orning, Helle Vogt and Stephen D. White.

Routledge Revivals: Medieval France (1995)
Routledge Revivals: Medieval France (1995)

Author: William W. Kibler

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 1078

ISBN-13: 1351665669

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First published in 1995, Medieval France: An Encyclopedia is the first single-volume reference work on the history and culture of medieval France. It covers the political, intellectual, literary, and musical history of the country from the early fifth to the late fifteenth century. The shorter entries offer succinct summaries of the lives of individuals, events, works, cities, monuments, and other important subjects, followed by essential bibliographies. Longer essay-length articles provide interpretive comments about significant institutions and important periods or events. The Encyclopedia is thoroughly cross-referenced and includes a generous selection of illustrations, maps, charts, and genealogies. It is especially strong in its coverage of economic issues, women, music, religion and literature. This comprehensive work of over 2,400 entries will be of key interest to students and scholars, as well as general readers.

Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe
Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe

Author: Richard W. Kaeuper

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0199244588

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Medieval Europe was a rapidly developing society with a problem of violent disorder. Professor Kaeuper's original and authoritative study reveals that chivalry was just as much a part of this problem as it was its solution. Chivalry praised heroic violence by knights, and fused such displaysof prowess with honour, piety, high-status, and attractiveness to women. Though the vast body of chivalric literature praised chivalry as necessary to civilization, most texts also worried over knightly violence, criticized the ideals and practices of chivalry, and often proposed reforms. Theknights themselves joined the debate, absorbing some reforms, ignoring others, sometimes proposing their own. The interaction of chivalry with major governing institutions ("church" and "state") emerging at that time was similarly complex: kings and clerics both needed and feared the force of theknighthood. This fascinating book lays bare these conflicts and paradoxes which surrounded the concept of chivalry in medieval Europe.