Medieval Europe was a rapidly developing society with a problem of violent disorder. Professor Kaeuper's original and authoritative study reveals that chivalry was not simply part of the solution. Chivalry praised heroic violence by knights, and fused such displays of prowess with honour,piety, high status, and attractiveness to women. Though the vast body of chivalric literature, here examined, praises chivalry as necessary to civilization, most texts also worry over knightly violence, criticize all ideals and practices of chivalry, and often propose reforms.
The Last Knight Errant~Sir Edward Woodville and the Age of Chivalry
The Last Knight Errant~Sir Edward Woodville and the Age of Chivalry Sir Edward Woodville was the medieval knight par excellence - except that his life coincided with the beginning of the Renaissance. With this vivid and long-awaited biography, Christopher Wilkins demonstrates how Sir Edward carved out an important role for himself in the 15th century, marrying the old-fashioned values of a chivalric age with the modernising trends that were dramatically re-shaping Europe.
The Book of Chivalry is the most pragmatic of all surviving chivalric manuals. Written at the height of the Hundred Years War, it includes the essential commonplaces of knighthood in the mid-fourteenth century and gives a close-up view of what one knight in particular absorbed of the medieval world of ideas around him, what he rejected or ignored, and what he added from his experience in camp, court, and campaign.
