IMC 2006: Sessions

Session 206: When Knighthood was in Flower: Perspectives on Chivalry and Warfare

Monday 10 July 2006, 14.15-15.45

Moderator/Chair:	Charles W. Connell, Department of History, Northern Arizona University
Respondent:	Steven Muhlberger, Department of History, Nipissing University, Ontario
Paper 206-a	Chaucer's Knight and the Integrity of Medieval Chivalry (Language: English) Gerald Morgan, School of English, Trinity College Dublin Index terms: Historiography - Modern Scholarship, Language and Literature - Middle English
Paper 206-b	Medievalism and Military Violence in Walter Scott (Language: English) Andrew Lynch, Department of English, Communication & Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia Index terms: Historiography - Modern Scholarship, Language and Literature - Other, Medievalism and Antiquarianism
Paper 206-c	Knights, Chivalry, and Cavalry: What Do We Do With All the Medieval Horsemen? (Language: English) Kelly DeVries, Department of History, Loyola College, Maryland / Royal Armouries, Leeds Index terms: Historiography - Modern Scholarship, Military History
Abstract	Abstract paper -a: This paper considers the status and reputation of Chaucer's Knight from the point of view of Chaucer's own military and diplomatic career and with reference to the continuing invocation of Sir John Hawkwood as a possible role model. Abstract paper -b: Walter Scott can be plausibly read as both nostalgic for the Middle Ages and as a progressivist Enlightenment critic of medieval deficiencies. This paper offers a new ideological assessment of Scott’s medievalism, through analysis of his representations of warfare and combat. It argues that Scott offers no blanket endorsement or rejection of the medieval as a discrete historical and cultural period. Rather, he creates a partly ‘timeless’ Middle Ages, often hard to distinguish from later ages, including his own. In making his themes of military violence, with all their passion and unreason, a strong link between the past and present, Scott challenges and re-evaluates both nostalgia and progressivism. The paper will mainly consider Scott’s poetry and prose fiction overtly set in the Middle Ages, but also some historical fictions set in later times. Abstract paper -c: to be provided.