Reading and War in Fifteenth-century England

Reading and War in Fifteenth-century England
Author: Catherine Nall
Publisher: DS Brewer
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 1843843242

Reading, writing and the prosecution of warfare went hand in hand in the fifteenth century, demonstrated by the wide circulation and ownership of military manuals and ordinances, and the integration of military concerns into a huge corpus of texts; but their relationship has hitherto not received the attention it deserves, a gap which this book remedies, arguing that the connections are vital to the literary culture of the time, and should be recognised on a much wider scale. Beginning with a detailed consideration of the circulation of one of the most important military manuals in the Middle Ages, Vegetius' De re militari, it highlights the importance of considering the activities of a range of fifteenth-century readers and writers in relation to the wider contemporary military culture. It shows how England's wars in France and at home, and the wider rhetoric and military thinking those wars generated, not only shaped readers' responses to their texts but also gave rise to the production of one of the most elaborate, rich and under-recognised pieces of verse of the Wars of the Roses in the form of 'Knyghthode and bataile'. It also indicates how the structure, language and meaning of canonical texts, including those by Lydgate and Malory, were determined by the military culture of the period.

The Wars of the Roses

The Wars of the Roses
Author: John Gillingham
Publisher: Phoenix
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781842122747

It was the period when the French beat the English and the English fought among themselves. Traditional historians have glossed over it, considering it the time that wrecked Britain's military greatness. But Gillingham elegantly separates myth from reality, arguing that, paradoxically, the wars actually proved how peaceful the country was. His gifted graphic description makes this exciting and dramatic throughout. “Incisively written and highly readable.”—Sunday Times. “Gillingham informs us...with such verve, with and intelligence that we are left dazzled and delighted.”—History.

A Short History of the Wars of the Roses

A Short History of the Wars of the Roses
Author: David Grummitt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2014-01-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0857723294

The Wars of the Roses (c. 1455-1487) are renowned as an infamously savage and tangled slice of English history. A bloody thirty-year struggle between the dynastic houses of Lancaster and York, they embraced localised vendetta (such as the bitter northern feud between the Percies and Nevilles) as well as the formal clash of royalist and rebel armies at St Albans, Ludford Bridge, Mortimer's Cross, Towton, Tewkesbury and finally Bosworth, when the usurping Yorkist king, Richard III, was crushed by Henry Tudor. Powerful personalities dominate the period: the charismatic and enigmatic Richard III, immortalized by Shakespeare; the slippery Warwick, the Kingmaker', who finally over-reached ambition to be cut down at the Battle of Barnet; and guileful women like Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret of Anjou, who for a time ruled the kingdom in her husband's stead. David Grummitt places the violent events of this complex time in the wider context of fifteenth-century kingship and the development of English political culture.Never losing sight of the traumatic impact of war on the lives of those who either fought in or were touched by battle, this captivating new history will make compelling reading for students of the late medieval period and Tudor England, as well as for general readers.

Fifteenth-Century Lives

Fifteenth-Century Lives
Author: Karen A. Winstead
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2020-11-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0268108552

In Fifteenth-Century Lives, Karen A. Winstead identifies and explores a major shift in the writing of Middle English saints’ lives. As she demonstrates, starting in the 1410s and ’20s, hagiography became more character-oriented, more morally complex, more deeply embedded in history, and more politically and socially engaged. Further, it became more self-consciously literary and began to feature women more prominently—and not only traditional virgin martyrs but also matrons and contemporary holy women. Winstead shows that this literature placed a premium on scholarship and teaching. Hagiography celebrated educators and scholars to a greater extent than ever before and became a vehicle for educating readers about Christian dogma. Focusing both on authors well known, such as John Lydgate and Margery Kempe, and on others less known, such as Osbern Bokenham and John Capgrave, Winstead argues that the values promoted by fifteenth-century hagiography helped to shape the reformist impulses that eventually produced the Reformation. Moreover, these values continued to influence post-Reformation hagiography, both Protestant and Catholic, well into the seventeenth century. In exploring these trends in fifteenth-century hagiography, identifying the factors that contributed to their emergence, and tracing their influence in later periods, Fifteenth-Century Lives marks an important contribution to revisionary scholarship on fifteenth-century literature. It will appeal to students and scholars of late medieval English literature and late medieval religion.

Reading English Verse in Manuscript c.1350-c.1500

Reading English Verse in Manuscript c.1350-c.1500
Author: Daniel Sawyer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2020-05-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0192599607

Reading English Verse in Manuscript, c.1350-c.1500 is the first book-length history of reading for later Middle English poetry. While much past work in the history of reading has revolved around marginalia, this book consults a wider range of evidence, from the weights of books in medieval bindings to relationships between rhyme and syntax. It combines literary-critical close readings, detailed case studies of particular surviving codices, and systematic manuscript surveys drawing on continental European traditions of quantitative codicology to demonstrate the variety, vitality, and formal concerns visible in the reading of verse in this period. The small-and large-scale formal features of poetry affected reading subtly but extensively, determining how readers might move through books and even shaping physical books themselves. Readers' responses to one formal feature, rhyme, meanwhile, evince a habitual but therefore deep-rooted formalism which can support and enhance close readings today. Reading English Verse in Manuscript sheds fresh light on poets such as Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, and Thomas Hoccleve, but also shows how their works were read in manuscript in the context of a much larger mass of anonymous poems that influenced canonical poems, in a pattern of mutual influence.

Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War

Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War
Author: Anne Curry
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780851157559

`Careful, original and wide-ranging study of many different aspects of late medieval military history.' HISTORY The Hundred Years War embraced warfare in all aspects, from the grand set pieces of Crecy and Agincourt to the pillaged lands of the dispossessed population. What makes this book different from previous studies emphasising the great battles is its use of less familiar evidence, such as administrative records and landscape archaeology, to gain a truer picture of the realities of medieval warfare. From a general review of battle tactics, the book turns to examine (at points enlisting computer analysis) a number of issues: the composition of the English army, the management of affairs in Aquitaine, the response in England at large to the war and the consequent propaganda and hardship, and the impact of warfare on local communities. Close study of surviving artefacts - weapons, fortifications - also allows realistic assessments of military and naval experiences. Contributors: ANDREW AYTON, MATTHEW BENNETT, ANNE CURRY, IAN FRIEL, ROBERT HARDY, MICHAEL HUGHES, MICHAEL JONES, BRIAN KEMP, JOHN KENYON, MARK ORMROD, ROBERT SMITH, MALCOLM VALE.

The Hundred Years War

The Hundred Years War
Author: C. T. Allmand
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 1988-02-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521319232

A comparative study of how the societies of late medieval England and France reacted to the long period of conflict between them from political, military, social and economic perspectives.

Crusading and Masculinities

Crusading and Masculinities
Author: Natasha R. Hodgson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2019-03-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351680145

This volume presents the first substantial exploration of crusading and masculinity, focusing on the varied ways in which the symbiotic relationship between the two was made manifest in a range of medieval settings and sources, and to what ends. Ideas about masculinity formed an inherent part of the mindset of societies in which crusading happened, and of the conceptual framework informing both those who recorded the events and those who participated. Examination and interrogation of these ideas enables a better contextualised analysis of how those events were experienced, comprehended and portrayed. The collection is structured around five themes: sources and models; contrasting masculinities; emasculation and transgression; masculinity and religiosity and kingship and chivalry. By incorporating masculinity within their analysis of the crusades and of crusaders the contributors demonstrate how such approaches greatly enhance our understanding of crusading as an ideal, an institution and an experience. Individual essays consider western campaigns to the Middle East and Islamic responses; events and sources from the Iberian peninsula and Prussia are also interrogated and re-examined, thus enabling cross-cultural comparison of the meanings attached to medieval manhood. The collection also highlights the value of employing gender as a vital means of assessing relationships between different groups of men, whose values and standards of behaviour were socially and culturally constructed in distinct ways.

The Oxford History of Poetry in English

The Oxford History of Poetry in English
Author: Helen Cooper
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 668
Release: 2023-05-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0192886738

The Oxford History of Poetry in English is designed to offer a fresh, multi-voiced, and comprehensive analysis of 'poetry': from Anglo-Saxon culture through contemporary British, Irish, American, and Global culture, including English, Scottish, and Welsh poetry, Anglo-American colonial and post-colonial poetry, and poetry in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean, India, Africa, Asia, and other international locales. The series both synthesizes existing scholarship and presents cutting-edge research, employing a global team of expert contributors for each of the fourteen volumes. This volume occupies both a foundational and a revolutionary place. Its opening date--1100--marks the re-emergence of a vernacular poetic record in English after the political and cultural disruption of the Norman Conquest. By its end date--1400--English poetry had become an established, if still evolving, literary tradition. The period between these dates sees major innovations and developments in language, topics, poetic forms, and means of expression. Middle English poetry reflects the influence of multiple contexts--history, social institutions, manuscript production, old and new models of versification, medieval poetic theory, and the other literary languages of England. It thus emphasizes the aesthetic, imaginative treatment of new and received materials by medieval writers and the formal craft required for their verse. Individual chapters treat the representation of national history and mythology, contemporary issues, and the shared doctrine and learning provided by sacred and secular sources, including the Bible. Throughout the period, lyric and romance figure prominently as genres and poetic modes, while some works hover enticingly on the boundary of genre and discursive forms. The volume ends with chapters on the major writers of the late fourteenth-century (Langland, the Gawain-poet, Chaucer, and Gower) and with a look forward to the reception of something like a national literary tradition in fifteenth-century literary culture.