Writing War: Medieval Literary Responses to Warfare

by Corinne J. Saunders (Editor)

War is a powerful and enduring literary topos, a repeated theme in both secular and religious literary genres of the middle ages. The idea and practice of war is central to some of the most dominant subject matters in the medieval period - as well as to chivalry, to religion, to ideas of nationhood, to concepts of gender, the body and the psyche. This book considers the variety of responses to warfare and combat in medieval literature, beginning with a consideration of ideal military practice and the reception of Vegetius, contrasted with Christine de Pisan's treatise on warfare. The collection then turns to chronicling war, particularly in France, Germany and Scotland, and also covers the fictions of war, as presented in English Arthurian narratives, Chaucer, Malory, and pastoral poetry. It concludes with an examination of attitudes to women in warfare.

MARIANNE AILES, CHRISTOPHER ALLMAND, GEORGES LE BRUSQUE, HELEN COOPER, HARRY JACKSON, ANDREW LYNCH, SIMON MEECHAM-JONES, CORINNE SAUNDERS, FRANCOISE LE SAUX, THEA SUMMERFIELD, NEIL E. THOMAS, KEVIN S. WHETTER.

CORINNE SAUNDERS and NEIL THOMAS are in the department of English Studies, University of Durham; FRANCOISE LE SAUX is in the department of French at the University of Reading.

Table of Contents

Introduction - Neil E. Thomas
The De re militari of Vegetius in the Middle Ages and Renaissance - Christopher Allmand
Ambroises's Heroes of the Third Crusade - Marianne Ailes
Medieval Responses to War in Rudolf von Ems - Harry Jackson
Chronicling War in the Duchy of Burgundy and the Kingdom of France at the Close of the Middle Ages - Georges le Brusque
War and Warfare in Christine de Pizan's Livre des Faits d'Armes et de Chevalerie - Francoise H M Le Saux
Barbour's Bruce : Compilation in Retrospect - Thea Summerfield
'Peace is good after war': The Narrative Seasons of English Arthurian Tradition - Andrew Lynch
Chaucer and Warfare - Simon Meecham-Jones
Malory and Warfare - Kevin S Whetter
Writing Women and Warfare - Corinne Saunders
Speaking for the Medieval Pastoral Satire - Helen Cooper

246 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2004

About the author

Corinne Saunders is Professor in the Department of English Studies. She specialises in medieval literature and the history of ideas, and has particular interests in romance writing. She is also interested in gender studies and the history of medicine. She has recently published a monograph, Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval Romance (2010), for which she was awarded AHRC-funded additional leave and a Leverhulme Research Fellowship. She is the author of The Forest of Medieval Romance (1993), Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England (2001), and over thirty essays and articles on a wide range of literary and cultural topics. She has edited a Blackwell Critical Guide to Chaucer (2001); A Blackwell Companion to Romance: from Classical to Contemporary (2004); Cultural Encounters in Medieval Romance (2005); A Concise Companion to Chaucer (2006); and (with Françoise le Saux and Neil Thomas) Writing War: Medieval Literary Responses (2004); (with Jane Macnaughton), Madness and Creativity in Literature and Culture (2005); (with David Fuller) Pearl: a Modernised Version by Victor Watts (2005); (with Ulrika Maude and Jane Macnaughton), The Body and the Arts (2009). Her edited collection, A Blackwell Companion to Medieval Poetry, was published in March 2010. She is the English editor of the international journal of medieval studies, Medium Ævum; and editor in overall charge of Medieval Studies (1100-1500) for the major online resource, The Literary Encyclopedia. She is the Director of Durham University's Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and Associate Director of the Centre for Medical Humanities, funded by the Wellcome Trust. She has also co-organised two Public Lecture Series in the University, ‘Madness and Creativity: The Mind, Medicine and Literature’, and ‘Flesh and Blood: The Body and the Arts’. She teaches across the range of Old and Middle English language and literature, as well as History of the English Language, Old French, and some Renaissance topics, at both BA and MA level. She currently supervises a number of PhD students working on later medieval literary topics, and welcomes enquiries from postgraduate applicants in these areas.

Reviews

[Freeman Stepan · Rating 5 out of 5]

在deepl的协助下读完导论和第一章，就四舍五入等于读过了吧。