English Writings on Chivalry and Warfare During the Hundred Years War (original) (raw)
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"Cultures of War in Graphic Novels", 2018
War has long been a central issue in graphic novels, and the exploration of conflict in this medium has been subject to increasing academic study. This focus has been mainly concentrated, however, on contemporary conflicts. Whilst understandable, this paper argues that temporal distance from conflict does not negate its significance nor does it mean that the issues raised by the graphic novel’s treatment of the genre are of little or no relevance to the contemporary reader. Accounts of medieval conflict have long been immortalised on the page: only the medium has changed over the centuries. Chroniclers of the period have long been recognised for their stylised descriptions of both individuals and battle, and so the graphic novel would appear a natural successor. As with any fictional rendering, however, historical veracity may at times cede to the demands of narrative or aesthetics, and readers and critics must bear in mind that modern depictions of the medieval are informed by the style, mores and culture of the present day and therefore have the ability to also misrepresent medieval warfare, or at least to portray it through a modern lens. This paper will focus therefore on two texts depicting the Hundred Years War. While this conflict, fought in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries between the kingdoms of England and France, is not a ‘small war’ as such, the conflict can be seen as a complex series of individual campaigns that had an important impact on medieval society and on the French countryside. Indeed, the graphic novels chosen facilitate this approach by focusing on specific, short periods of the war. Warren Ellis’s Crécy provides a warts-and-all depiction of one of the pivotal battles of the conflict focalised through an English archer who narrates his experiences in the war to the reader. More than a simple account of the battle itself, the novel also provides a depiction of medieval warfare in the Middle Ages from an English perspective. The series Le Trône d'Argile, conversely, is a product of the French bande dessinée which provides this paper with a counterpoint view of the conflict. Focusing on the fifteenth century phase of conflict this series also provides a vivid depiction of medieval warfare and combat. Both texts emphasise the violence of contemporary war, but it is important to consider the nature of this portrayal and its relevance to both medieval and modern understanding of warfare. This paper will therefore consider the depiction of warfare in these works, focusing on the visualisation of medieval warfare and medieval behaviour. In particular, by considering conduct in war, the importance and place of chivalry, and the impact of war on both individual and society, it will provide a thorough analysis of these works and the view of the medieval that they provide to a modern audience.
Military Courage and Fear in the Late Medieval Chivalric Imagination
Cahiers de Recherches Medievales et Humanistes, 2012
Chivalric literature offered a powerful celebration of courage and denunciation of the shame of cowardice. This article explores the relationship between late medieval French debates on this subject and the military reality of the period. Résumé : La littérature chevaleresque offre une célébration forte du courage et une dénonciation de la honte que représente la lâcheté. Cet article explore le lien entre les débats français sur ce sujet à la fin du Moyen Âge et la réalité militaire de l'époque.
Narrative Voice and Hybrid Style in Burgundian Chivalric Biography
Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes …, 2011
Critics are now generally agreed that the Burgundian chivalric biography known as the Livre des faits de messire Jacques de Lalaing (c. 1470) is a compilation of sources that draws on the conventions of both fictional and historiographical works of the period. Yet little ...
2020
MA Dissertation (2020) Chivalry in the Middle Ages has often been defined as ‘the religious and moral system of behavior that the perfect knight was expected to follow’.1 However, singular definitions of chivalry should be disregarded because displays of medieval masculinity and chivalry were a complicated mixture of social conditions, institutional influence, and individual motivation. Using fictional and 'factual' literature, the dissertation attempts to understand the multiplicity of masculinity and individual knightly motivations caused by competing factual and fictional depictions of chivalry. Overall, histories of chivalry and masculinity between c.1350-c.1410 in France have been treated singularly for one core reason: the ideal qualities of chivalry have been treated as the reality for all-knights, when in fact chivalric ideologies were unique to individuals and overlapped in both factual and fictional literature of the period.
Monstrueuse guerre!" Literature and Warfare in Late Sixteenth-Century France
2013
The end of the French Renaissance was marked by a period of violent civil conflict, often referred to as the Wars of Religion, which lasted from 1562 to 1598. While substantial work has been done on structures of violence during this period, literary scholarship has yet to engage fully with the implications of war in the development of literary discourse. Moving beyond readings in which war is relevant only as context, I recuperate both major and minor texts of this period as a corpus that offers a sustained reflection on the problem of how to represent violence in language. Because representing war requires writers to grapple with how to use language to represent violence inflicted on physical bodies, formal literary choices become part of a broader cultural discourse of how to think about and judge war. Looking at four different genres--essays, tragedy, epic, and memoir--my analysis highlights how, in the closing decades of the sixteenth century, literary form develops in part as ...