Commonly perceived as an ethical code of the aristocratic elite, chivalry had wide-ranging impacts on people at all levels of medieval society as a pervasive element of medieval culture, a moral compass, and even as a military strategy. In this course, we will explore the evolution of chivalry, from its twelfth-century origins, through to its thirteenth-century heyday and then to its fifteenth-century decline.
The course is arranged around key themes that explore the relationship between medieval social, political and religious life. Using case studies of the Crusades, The Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses, we will consider chivalry’s influence on the Church, monarchy and state, and discover how courtly love shaped relationships between men and women.
This course will also explore the “afterlives” of medieval chivalry, by considering how later cultures have rediscovered and appropriated chivalry for political and cultural ends, such as rediscovery of medieval art and culture in the gothic revival and pre-Raphaelite art of the nineteenth century, and the disturbing appropriation of chivalric symbols in twentieth-century fascist propaganda.