| Paper 302-c | Storied Ceremonies: The Literary Aspects of Royal Ceremonies and Their Heraldic Accounts in Late Medieval England
(Language: English)
Emma-Catherine Wilson, Department of English, University of Ottawa
Index terms: Heraldry, Language and Literature - Middle English, Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Military History |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
The Hundred Years War marks a critical moment in the evolution in the role and status of knights. If in the 14th century, the French army still retained a feudal aspect, the English army was already turning towards modernity (in both its financing and its composition or legal status). A century later, when war became a matter for technicians, Charles VII's reforms imposed a monopoly on armed force and obliged the aristocracy to serve the king exclusively, regardless of their title or noble status. Literature, however, continued to exalt a chivalrous figure who was already out of touch with reality.
Paper -b:
This paper will examine chivalric biographies and memoirs as sources for the study of medieval chivalry, focusing in particular upon the Livre des fais du bon messire Jehan le Maingre (1409) and Jean de Bueil's Le Jouvencel (c.1465). Scholars from Johann Huizinga to Elisabeth Gaucher have seen these texts as nostalgic and idealistic fantasies that were out of touch with contemporary reality. But this paper will argue that such texts are much more complicated and interesting, reflecting energetic, imaginative, and important developments in thinking and writing about knighthood, but also works that must be read within their historical contexts.
Paper -c:
Though they have long been dismissed by literary scholars as unsophisticated and tedious recordings of deeds, heraldic accounts provide concrete examples of the late-medieval English nobility's deliberate imitation of romances. Focusing on accounts of royal ceremonies such as the marriage of Edward IV's young son Richard (1477) as well as the welcome pageants for Henry VII at York (1486) and for Queen Margaret at Coventry (1455), my paper will explore both the literary aspects of the occasions themselves (such as the appearance of well-known romance characters in pageants) and of the heralds' at times purposefully stylistic narration of these spectacles.
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