Seeing Red, Wearing Green: Cultures of Vengeance and the Code of Chivalry
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Durham Univ.
Organizer Name
Abigail Steed
Organizer Affiliation
Durham Univ.
Presider Name
Giles E. M. Gasper
Presider Affiliation
Durham Univ.
Paper Title 1
The (Im)morality of Vengeance in the Old English Literary Corpus and Early French Romance
Presenter 1 Name
Abigail Steed
Paper Title 2
"Euery mann that shuld do a poynt of worshippe shuld haue to hymself a marke of worshippe in tokyn of his dughtynes": The Materiality of Type and Token Identity Symbolism in Medieval Heraldic Writing and Romance
Presenter 2 Name
Michael J. Huxtable
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Durham Univ.
Start Date
10-5-2018 3:30 PM
Session Location
Bernhard 211
Description
This session will explore different perspectives on chivalric society in the Middle Ages. The contrasting ways in which romance authors conjured the ideals of the society they write about, with the realities of that in which they lived and wrote, allows questions of continuity and discontinuity with previous models, values and their expression. The session will focus on the deeper roots of chivalry’s social and literary models, investigating, for example, the cultures of vengeance from the later 11th and 12th centuries, with appeal to the earlier Middle Ages, which, in religious, social and literary terms chivalric codes inherited. The social location of chivalric ideas, especially as connected to visual and ritual aspects, will also be scrutinised, as well as they ways in which such performative moments contributed to the formation of chivalric identities. How chivalric romance navigated overlapping themes of vengeance, status, virtues and vices forms another area which this session seeks to open up. Papers for the session will take on themes of moralistic social commentary as expressed through literary representations, the role of affirmative ritual in upholding chivalric identities, and the philosophical ideas that lie behind observable heraldic expression.
Abigail F G Steed
Seeing Red, Wearing Green: Cultures of Vengeance and the Code of Chivalry
Bernhard 211
This session will explore different perspectives on chivalric society in the Middle Ages. The contrasting ways in which romance authors conjured the ideals of the society they write about, with the realities of that in which they lived and wrote, allows questions of continuity and discontinuity with previous models, values and their expression. The session will focus on the deeper roots of chivalry’s social and literary models, investigating, for example, the cultures of vengeance from the later 11th and 12th centuries, with appeal to the earlier Middle Ages, which, in religious, social and literary terms chivalric codes inherited. The social location of chivalric ideas, especially as connected to visual and ritual aspects, will also be scrutinised, as well as they ways in which such performative moments contributed to the formation of chivalric identities. How chivalric romance navigated overlapping themes of vengeance, status, virtues and vices forms another area which this session seeks to open up. Papers for the session will take on themes of moralistic social commentary as expressed through literary representations, the role of affirmative ritual in upholding chivalric identities, and the philosophical ideas that lie behind observable heraldic expression.
Abigail F G Steed