A fascinating study of the complex role of chivalry in medieval society

Medieval Europe was a rapidly developing society with a problem of violent disorder. Professor Kaeuper`s original and authoritative study reveals that chivalry was just as much a part of this problem as it was its solution. Chivalry praised heroic violence by knights, and fused such displays of prowess with honour, piety, high-status, and attractiveness to women. Though the vast body of chivalric literature praised chivalry as necessary to civilization, most texts also worried over knightly violence, criticized the ideals and practices of chivalry, and often proposed reforms. The knights themselves joined the debate, absorbing some reforms, ignoring others, sometimes proposing their own. The interaction of chivalry with major governing institutions ("church" and "state") emerging at that time was similarly complex: kings and clerics both needed and feared the force of the knighthood. This fascinating book lays bare these conflicts and paradoxes which surrounded the concept of chivalry in medieval Europe.

Readership: Scholars and students of medieval history and literature.

Contents
Prologue
Issues and Approaches

1. The Problem of Public Order and the Knights
2. Evidence on Chivalry and its Interpretation
The Link with Clergie

3. Knights and Piety
4. Clergie, Chevalerie, and Reform
5.
The Link with Royaute
Chevaleriue and Royaute
6. English Kingship, Chivalry, and Literature
The Ambivalent Force of Chivalry

7. The Privileged Practice of Violence: Worship of the Demi-God Prowess
8. Knighthood in Action
9. Social Dominance of the Knights
10. Knights, Ladies, and Love
11. Chanson de Geste and Reform
12. Quest and Questioning in Romance
13. Chivalric Self-Criticism and Reform
Epilogue
Bibliography