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Book Arthurianism in Early Plantagenet England

Download or read book Arthurianism in Early Plantagenet England written by Christopher Michael Berard and published by Boydell Press. This book was released on 2021-04-16 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First full-scale account of the use of the Arthurian legend in the long twelfth century.

Book Arthurianism in Early Plantagenet England

Download or read book Arthurianism in Early Plantagenet England written by Christopher Michael Berard and published by Arthurian Studies. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First full-scale account of the use of the Arthurian legend in the long twelfth century. The precedent of empire and the promise of return lay at the heart of King Arthur's appeal in the Middle Ages. Both ideas found fullness of expression in the twelfth century: monarchs and magnates sought to recreate an Arthurian golden age that was as wondrous as the biblical and classical worlds, but less remote. Arthurianism, the practice of invoking and emulating the legendary Arthur of post-Roman Britain, was thus an instance of medieval medievalism. This book provides a comprehensive history of the first 150 years of Arthurianism, from its beginnings under Henry II of England to a highpoint under Edward I. It contends that the Plantagenet kings of England mockingly ascribed a literal understanding of the myth of King Arthur's return to the Brittonic Celts whilst adopting for themselves a figurative and typological interpretation of the myth. A central figure in this work is Arthur of Brittany (1187-1203), who, for more than a generation, was the focus of Arthurian hopes and their disappointment. CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL BERARD is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Providence College. He completed his PhD at the University of Toronto's Centre for Medieval Studies.

Book Historians on John Gower

Download or read book Historians on John Gower written by Stephen Rigby and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2019 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The late fourteenth century was the age of the Black Death, the Peasants' Revolt, the Hundred Years War, the deposition of Richard II, the papal schism and the emergence of the heretical doctrines of John Wyclif and the Lollards. These social, political and religious crises and conflicts were addressed not only by preachers and by those involved in public affairs but also by poets, including Chaucer and Langland. Above all, though, it is in the verse of John Gower that we find the most direct engagement with contemporary events. Yet, surprisingly, few historians have examined Gower's responses to these events or have studied the broader moral and philosophical outlook which he used to make sense of them. Here, a number of eminent medievalists seek to demonstrate what historians can add to our understanding of Gower's poetry and his ideas about society (the nobility and chivalry, the peasants and the 1381 revolt, urban life and the law), the Church (the clergy, papacy, Lollardy, monasticism, and the friars) gender (masculinity and women and power), politics (political theory and the deposition of Richard II) and science and astronomy. The book also offers an important reassessment of Gower's biography based on newly-discovered primary sources. STEPHEN RIGBY is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Social and Economic History at the University of Manchester; SIAN ECHARD is Professor of English, University of British Columbia. Contributors: Mark Bailey, Michael Bennett, Martha Carlin, James Davis, Seb Falk, Christopher Fletcher, David Green, David Lepine, Martin Heale, Katherine Lewis, Anthony Musson, Stephen Rigby, Jens Röhrkasten.

Book Henry II

Download or read book Henry II written by Christopher Harper-Bill and published by Boydell Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henry II is the most imposing figure among the medieval kings of England. His fiefs & domains extended from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, & his court was frequented by the greatest thinkers of his time. Best known for his dramatic conflicts, it was also a crucial period in the evolution of legal & governmental institutions.

Book Eleanor of Aquitaine

Download or read book Eleanor of Aquitaine written by Jean Flori and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary life of Eleanor of Aquitaine (1124-1204) still fascinates & intrigues historians today. Jean Flori attempts to write the full story of the queen who was determined, in spite of the huge moral, social, political & religious pressures bearing down upon her, to take charge of her own life in all its aspects.

Book The Reign of Arthur

Download or read book The Reign of Arthur written by Christopher Gidlow and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2005-05-19 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did King Arthur really exist? The Reign of Arthur takes a fresh look at the early sources describing Arthur's career and compares them to the reality of Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries. It presents, for the first time, both the most up to date scholarship and a convincing case for the existence of a real sixth-century British general called Arthur. Where others speculate wildly or else avoid the issue, Gidlow, remaining faithful to the sources, deals directly with the central issue of interest to the general reader: does the Arthur that we read of in the ninth-century sources have any link to a real leader of the fifth or sixth century? Was Arthur a powerful king or a Dark Age general co-cordinating the British resistance to Saxon invaders? Detailed analysis of the key Arthurian sources, contemporary testimony and archaeology reveals the reality of fragmented British kingdoms uniting under a single military command to defeat the Saxons. There is plausible and convincing evidence for the existence of their war-leader, and, in this challenging and provocative work, Gidlow concludes that the Dark Age hypothesis of Arthur, War-leader of the Kings of the Britons, not only fits the facts, it is the only way of making sense of them.

Book The Cult of St Thomas Becket in the Plantagenet World  C 1170 c 1220

Download or read book The Cult of St Thomas Becket in the Plantagenet World C 1170 c 1220 written by Paul Webster and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2016 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary growth and development of the cult of St Thomas Becket is investigated here, with a particular focus on its material culture.

Book Prophecy  Politics and Place in Medieval England

Download or read book Prophecy Politics and Place in Medieval England written by Victoria Flood and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2016 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the prophetic tradition in medieval England brings out its influence on contemporary politics and the contemporary elite.

Book The Return of King Arthur

Download or read book The Return of King Arthur written by Beverly Taylor and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 1983 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The revival of interest in Arthurian legend in the 19th century was a remarkable phenomenon, apparently at odds with the spirit of the age. Tennyson was widely criticised for his choice of a medieval topic; yet The Idylls of the Kingwere accepted as the national epic, and a flood of lesser works was inspired by them, on both sides of the Atlantic. Elisabeth Brewer and Beverly Taylor survey the course of Arthurian literature from 1800 to the present day, and give an account of all the major English and American contributions. Some of the works are well-known, but there are also a host of names which will be new to most readers, and some surprises, such as J. Comyns Carr's King Arthur, rightly ignored as a text, but a piece oftheatrical history, for Sir Henry Irving played King Arthur, Ellen Terry was Guinevere, Arthur Sullivan wrote the music, and Burne-Jones designed the sets. The Arthurian works of the Pre-Raphaelites are discussed at length, as are the poemsof Edward Arlington Robinson, John Masefield and Charles Williams. Other writers have used the legends as part of a wider cultural consciousness: The Waste Land, David Jones's In Parenthesis and The Anathemata, and the echoes ofTristan and Iseult in Finnigan's Wake are discussed in this context. Novels on Arthurian themes are given their due place, from the satirical scenes of Thomas Love Peacock's The Misfortunes of Elphin and Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court to T.H. White's serio-comic The Once and Future King and the many recent novelists who have turned away from the chivalric Arthur to depict him as a Dark Age ruler. The Return of King Arthurincludes a bibliography of British and American creative writing relating to the Arthurian legends from 1800 to the present day.

Book The Rise of Alchemy in Fourteenth Century England

Download or read book The Rise of Alchemy in Fourteenth Century England written by Jonathan Hughes and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-03-08 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book to explore the importance of alchemy and its links to the occult in the period between 1320 and 1400. Alchemists didn't just try to turn metals into gold: they studied planetary influences on metals and people, refined plants and minerals in the search for medicines. This book illustrates how this branch of thought became more popular as the practical and theoretical knowledge of alchemists spread throughout England.

Book Malory and His European Contemporaries

Download or read book Malory and His European Contemporaries written by Miriam Edlich-Muth and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2014 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reconsideration of Arthurian compilations in the late middle ages, looking at the complex ways in which they reshape their material for new audiences.

Book Arthurian Myths and Alchemy

Download or read book Arthurian Myths and Alchemy written by Jonathan Hughes and published by Sutton Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2002 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a controversial study of the life of one of the most charismatic and neglected late medieval kings. It reveals that Edward was just as complicated as his younger brother Richard III.

Book King Arthur in America

Download or read book King Arthur in America written by Alan Lupack and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 1999 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: King Arthur in America analyzes the tremendous appeal of the Arthurian legends in America by examining the ways that Americans have found to democratize the Matter of Britain and to incorporate aspects of it not only into America's own mythologies but also into literature, film, social history, and popular culture.

Book A Great and Terrible King

Download or read book A Great and Terrible King written by Marc Morris and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-03-15 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major biography of a truly formidable king, whose reign was one of the most dramatic and important of the entire Middle Ages, leading to war and conquest on an unprecedented scale. Edward I is familiar to millions as "Longshanks," conqueror of Scotland and nemesis of Sir William Wallace (in "Braveheart"). Yet that story forms only the final chapter of the king's action-packed life. Earlier, Edward had defeated and killed Simon de Montfort in battle; traveled to the Holy Land; conquered Wales, extinguishing its native rulers and constructing a magnificent chain of castles. He raised the greatest armies of the Middle Ages and summoned the largest parliaments; notoriously, he expelled all the Jews from his kingdom. The longest-lived of England's medieval kings, Edward fathered fifteen children with his first wife, Eleanor of Castile and, after her death, erected the Eleanor Crosses—the grandest funeral monuments ever fashioned for an English monarch. In this book, Marc Morris examines afresh the forces that drove Edward throughout his relentless career: his character, his Christian faith, and his sense of England's destiny—a sense shaped largely by the tales of the legendary King Arthur. Morris also explores the competing reasons that led Edward's opponents (including Robert Bruce) to resist him. The result is a sweeping story, immaculately researched yet compellingly told, and a vivid picture of medieval Britain at the moment when its future was decided.

Book King Arthur

    Book Details:
  • Author : Nicholas J. Higham
  • Publisher : Yale University Press
  • Release : 2018-11-20
  • ISBN : 0300240864
  • Pages : 339 pages

Download or read book King Arthur written by Nicholas J. Higham and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-20 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A leading medievalist takes a clear-eyed look at the evidence for the existence of the legendary Arthur.” —The Sunday Times “Best Paperbacks of 2021” According to legend, King Arthur saved Britain from the Saxons and reigned over it gloriously sometime around A.D. 500. Whether or not there was a “real” King Arthur has all too often been neglected by scholars; most period specialists today declare themselves agnostic on this important matter. In this erudite volume, Nick Higham sets out to solve the puzzle, drawing on his original research and expertise to determine precisely when, and why, the legend began. Higham surveys all the major attempts to prove the origins of Arthur, weighing up and debunking hitherto claimed connections with classical Greece, Roman Dalmatia, Sarmatia, and the Caucasus. He then explores Arthur’s emergence in Wales—up to his rise to fame at the hands of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Certain to arouse heated debate among those committed to defending any particular Arthur, Higham’s book is an essential study for anyone seeking to understand how Arthur’s story began. “Likely to be the definitive text on the legendary warrior for the foreseeable future. With his profound knowledge of the rules of historical narrative and patient but forensic analysis of the evidence, Higham’s riveting book brings the historical Arthur to what may be his last, decisive battle.” —Max Adams, author of The First Kingdom “Fascinating, authoritative analysis.” —P. D. Smith, The Guardian “Intelligent and eminently readable . . . For fans of a fascinating story that is wonderfully well told, this is the perfect book to take you back to King Arthur’s time.” —All About History

Book Gesta Regum Britannie

Download or read book Gesta Regum Britannie written by Neil Wright and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 1991 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Chr  tien s Equal  Raoul de Houdenc

Download or read book Chr tien s Equal Raoul de Houdenc written by Raoul de Houdenc and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2021 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By his contemporaries, Raoul de Houdenc was 'mentioned in the same breath as Chrétien de Troyes as one of the masters of French poetry' (Keith Busby, The New Arthurian Encyclopaedia).