Date of Award

8-2026

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

English

First Advisor

Jana K. Schulman, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Tobias Capwell, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Peggy McCracken, Ph.D.

Fourth Advisor

Marjorie Harrington, Ph.D.

Keywords

Chivalric, combat, helmet, medieval, motif, narrative

Abstract

This research explores the continuity of chivalric combat descriptions throughout medieval literature. By tracing the history, development, and distribution of the helmet-cleave motif, this study is able to examine combat scenes spanning a wide reach of time, genera, and language. The purpose of this work is to suggest a reading methodology for the chivalric combat scene that appropriately situates it in its cross-textual context and so reveals the nuance of its expression and the value in its study.

Despite the volume of surviving combat descriptions in medieval literature, they remain underrepresented in the scholarship due to their apparent repetitious and cliché form. By interrogating that very repetition in image, this study reveals that the chivalric combat scene behaves as its own micro-narrative genera imbedded in a panoply of host texts. This study found that the chivalric combat scene is structured around a set of combat motifs, slowly changing but always referential images that communicate complex meaning efficiently and allow for specific expression through subtle variation.

This study uses the repeated image of a sword cleaving through a helmet as its primary diagnostic tool, a method that reveals the chivalric combat micro-narrative is closely bound to early twelfth-century assumptions of combat physicality and oral narrative. While this study explores the wide reach of the chivalric combat scene, it also reveals that the underlying assumptions that built the helmet-cleave motif also prevent it from reaching into situations, times, and cultures too far removed from the world of the mail-clad knight.

Access Setting

Dissertation-Open Access

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