The Origins of Courtliness


Book Description

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Book Argues that the origins of courtliness lie in the German courts, their courtier class, and the education for court service in the tenth and eleventh centuries.




Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality


Book Description

One of the great achievements of the Middle Ages, Europe’s courtly culture gave the world the tournament, the festival, the knighting ceremony, and also courtly love. But courtly love has strangely been ignored by historians of sexuality. With Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality, James Schultz corrects this oversight with careful analysis of key courtly texts of the medieval German literary tradition. Courtly love, Schultz finds, was provoked not by the biological and intrinsic factors that play such a large role in our contemporary thinking about sexuality—sex difference or desire—but by extrinsic signs of class: bodies that were visibly noble and behaviors that represented exemplary courtliness. Individuals became “subjects” of courtly love only to the extent that their love took the shape of certain courtly roles such as singer, lady, or knight. They hoped not only for physical union but also for the social distinction that comes from realizing these roles to perfection. To an extraordinary extent, courtly love represented the love of courtliness—the eroticization of noble status and the courtly culture that celebrated noble power and refinement




Knights at Court


Book Description

"The first comprehensive history of courtliness and chivalry in their literary and cultural contexts."--Robert Grudin, University of Oregon "The first comprehensive history of courtliness and chivalry in their literary and cultural contexts."--Robert Grudin, University of Oregon




Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England


Book Description

In this work R. Malcolm Smuts examines the fundamental cultural changes that occurred within the English royal court between the last decade of the sixteenth century and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642.




Shaping Courtliness in Medieval France


Book Description

The question of what medieval "courtliness" was, both as a literary influence and as a historical "reality", is debated in this volume. The concept of courtliness forms the theme of this collection of essays. Focused on works written in the Francophone world between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, they examine courtliness as both an historical privilege and aliterary ideal, and as a concept that operated on and was informed by complex social and economic realities. Several essays reveal how courtliness is subject to satire or is the subject of exhortation in works intended for noblemen and women, not to mention ambitious bourgeois. Others, more strictly literary in their focus, explore the witty, thoughtful and innovative responses of writers engaged in the conscious process of elevating the new vernacular culture through the articulation of its complexities and contradictions. The volume as a whole, uniting philosophical, theoretical, philological, and cultural approaches, demonstrates that medieval "courtliness" is an ideal that fascinates us to this day. It is thus a fitting tribute to the scholarship of Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, in its exploration of the prrofound and wide-ranging ideas that define her contribution to the field. DANIEL E O'SULLIVAN is Associate Professor of French at the University of Mississippi; LAURIE SHEPHARD is Associate Professor of Italian at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Contributors: Peter Haidu, Donald Maddox, Michel-André Bossy, Kristin Burr, Joan Tasker Grimbert, David Hult, Virgine Greene, Logan Whalen, Evelyn Birge Vitz, Elizabeth W. Poe, Daniel E. O'Sullivan, William Schenck, Nadia Margolis, Laine Doggett, E. Jane Burns, Nancy FreemanRegalado, Laurie Shephard, Sarah White




Courtesy Lost


Book Description

In Courtesy Lost, Kristina M. Olson analyses the literary impact of the social, political, and economic transformations of the fourteenth century through an exploration of Dante’s literary and political influence on Boccaccio. The book reveals how Boccaccio rewrote the past through the lens of the Commedia, torn between nostalgia for elite families in decline and the need to promote morality and magnanimity within the Florentine Republic. By examining the passages in Boccaccio’s Decameron, De casibus, and Esposizioni in which the author rewrites moments in Florentine and Italian history that had also appeared in Dante’s Commedia, Olson illuminates the ways in which Boccaccio expressed his deep ambivalence towards the political and social changes of his era. She illustrates this through an analysis of Dante’s and Boccaccio’s treatments of the idea of courtesy, or cortesia, in an era when the chivalry of the declining aristocracy was being supplanted by the civility of the rising merchant classes.




The Birth of Nobility


Book Description

For 300 years separate and mutually uncomprehending English and French historiographies have confused the history of medieval aristocracy. Unpicking the basic assumptions behind both national traditions, this book explains them, reconciles them and offers entirely new ways to take the study of aristocracy forward in both England and France. The Birth of Nobility analyses the enormous international field of publications on the subject of medieval aristocracy, breaking it down into four key debates: noble conduct, noble lineage, noble class and noble power. Each issue is subjected to a thorough review by comparing current scholarship with what a vast range of historical source material actually says. It identifies the points of divergence in the national traditions of each of these debates and highlights where they have been mutually incomprehensible. For students studying medieval Europe.




Court and Its Critics


Book Description

The Court and Its Critics focuses on the disillusionment with courtliness, the derision of those who live at court, and the open hostility toward the court, themes common to Renaissance culture.




The Making of Manners and Morals in Twelfth-Century England


Book Description

How different are we from those in the past? Or, how different do we think we are from those in the past? Medieval people were more dirty and unhygienic than us – as novels, TV, and film would have us believe – but how much truth is there in this notion? This book seeks to challenge some of these preconceptions by examining medieval society through rules of conduct, and specifically through the lens of a medieval Latin text entitled The Book of the Civilised Man – or Urbanus magnus – which is attributed to Daniel of Beccles. Urbanus magnus is a twelfth-century poem of almost 3,000 lines which comprehensively surveys the day-to-day life of medieval society, including issues such as moral behaviour, friendship, marriage, hospitality, table manners, and diet. Currently, it is a neglected source for the social and cultural history of daily life in medieval England, but by incorporating modern ideas of disgust and taboo, and merging anthropology, sociology, and archaeology with history, this book aims to bring it to the fore, and to show that medieval people did have standards of behaviour. Although they may seem remote to modern ‘civilised’ people, there is both continuity and change in human behaviour throughout the centuries.