Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2001. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

<p> Chivalry was the dominant secular ideal of Chaucer's time and the nature of his interest in it has naturally been the subject of conjecture. Most judgments, however, have been based on an insufficient understanding of the historical background. In fact both historical and literary approaches to the topic of chivalry generally have tended to oversimplify the complex of ideas and practices associated with the term. This dissertation therefore re-examines the scope of chivalric theory and practice as a necessary preliminary to a scrutiny of Chaucer's concern with the concept. </p> The study concludes that chivalric ideas always had an importance disproportionate to the comparatively modest practical significance of actual knights and knighthood. The centrality of these ideas cannot therefore be judged by their relation to historical actualities. Their purpose was not restricted to providing a pattern of conduct for knights, nor were they in any way autonomous of medieval thought generally. The figure of the mounted warrior, thrust into prominence by early medieval military and social developments, became the focus for an accumulation of ideas and myths, and especially for theories about the use of force and of temporal power and secular life generally. </p> <p> Since Chaucer's knights are frequently lovers, special attention is paid within this broad hypothesis to the role of love in chivalric ideas. While fighting for love appears to have been of negligible importance as a factor in practical knightly motivation, writiers of discursive or specifically chivalric treatises either condemned it outright or approved of it only if it was morally irreproachable and led to the cultivation of chilaric virtues for their own sake. Fighting to gain a woman's love provides a common plot structure in the romances, but these romances usually cited as justifying a definition of chivalry in amatory terms in fact do no such thing. On the basis of analyses of several important roamnces, especially Gottfried's Tristan, Chretien's Lancelot, the Prose Lancelot, Wolfram's Parzival, the Morte Darthur of Malory, and Gawain and the Green Knight, this dissertation concludes that there was a central chivaric tradition which viewed the pursuit of love as an inversion of the knight's responsibilities to God and society. </p> <p> Chaucer's knights do not reflect contemporary social realities but rather this broader symbolic potential. A study of significance of the crusade in the late Middle Ages reveals that even the Knight of the General Prologue is mainly an emblem of right spiritual orientation rather than an endorsement of a specifically knightly duty or of contemporary crusade projects. The traditional polarity between love-service and true Christian knighthood underlies the portrait of the Knight and the Squire. As an embodiment of the duty of spiritual warfare the Knight is not just the specialised figure he appears to be. Moreover in his tale he presents in Theseus a knight who maintains the structure of society as faithfully as he himself has defended the Church, while Arcite and Palamon, like the Squire, represent a subversion of proper knightly functions. The "Knight's Tale" sets all secular power, of which kngihthood is the emblem, in a transcendental perspective. </p> <p> In other of the Canterbury Tales chivalric references are important, though not because of any interplay between knightly and non-knightly social classes. Characters such as the Wife of Bath, the Merchant and the Franklin are to be judged partly by the inadequcy of their notions of chivalry in relation to the symbolism established by the contrast between Knight and Squire. The conflict of love and knighthood also furthers our understanding of Troilus, in which the hero is shown to choose an inappropriate kind of chivalry; in addition the theme is prominent in some of the minor poems, especially the "Complaint of Mars". / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Scholars have long been attentive to the cultural legacy of Valois Burgundy a site of remarkable artistic and literary productivity in the mostly desolate cultural landscape of fifteenth-century France. It is only recently, however, that critics have begun to interrogate Burgundian courtly literature with an eye to its narrative complexity and rhetorical and discursive density, and to the political and cultural concerns encoded within it. This study emulates and supports these efforts by undertaking a close reading of a remarkable Burgundian chronicle one which depicts and defends a rare experiment in one of the most ideologically resonant enterprises of the day. The text, contained in Jean de Wavrins vast historical compilation, the Anciennes Chroniques dAngleterre, describes a crusading expedition to Constantinople, the Black Sea, and various points on the Danube in 1444-46. Led by Jeans nephew Waleran, the seigneur de Wavrin, the expedition was largely a failure. The author(s) of the chronicle therefore had a great deal to answer for; yet as the contours of their text reveal, their interests extended well beyond chivalric apologetics. This study analyzes the fascinating narrative tensions which unsettle the expedition narrative, and which offer a window into its varied (and often contending) rhetorical objectives. It considers, for instance, the tense interplay between two treatments of Walerans chivalry: one of which relies on epic and romance themes to depict him as a heroic warrior, and one which reveals his deliberate (and strategic) manipulations of those codes to preserve and burnish his reputation. It also explores the ways in which epic references to earlier crusades and anti-Islamic conflicts, invoked in a manner that tends to ennoble Walerans expedition, are truncated and subverted by strategic concerns over the problems of chivalric temerity and the power and sophistication of Ottoman forces. Together, the study concludes, these findings speak to the discursive complexity of the Burgundian court: a place where courtier-knights fashioned themselves strategically, using the very codes which some scholars have associated with premodern/medieval corporatism, and where warriors carefully negotiated the discursive margins of the courtly cult of prowess in order to articulate pragmatic advice based on lived experience. / History

Thesis (M.A.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 2000. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2824. Typescript. Abstract precedes thesis title page as [2] preliminary leaves. Copy 2 in Main Collection. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-96).

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Early American writer Hugh Henry Brackenridge conceived and developed a code of modern chivalry in his writings that culminated in the long prose satire Modern Chivalry. He first introduced his code in the poem "The Modern Chevalier," in which a modern knight is shown traveling about the country in an attempt to understand and correct the political absurdities of the people. In Modern Chivalry, this code is developed in the three major themes of rationalism, morality, and moderation and the related concern that man recognize his proper place in society. Satire is Brackenridge's weapon as well as the primary aesthetic virtue of his novel. The metaphor of modern chivalry serves to tie the various elements of the rambling book into a unified whole.

My project is founded on an inter-genre, comparative approach between Chaucers <i>Franklins Tale</i> from the Canterbury collection, and Jean Froissarts <i>Chroniques</i>, the innovative and epic account of French history in the thirteenth century. I have adopted a method of thematic comparison between the two in an effort to illuminate parallels of example and authorial intent in the works of these almost exactly contemporaneous authors. My thesis therefore becomes a selective examination of the ethical functions of their literature.<p>Twentieth century scholarship focusing on the similarities between Geoffrey Chaucer and Jean Froissart has left little doubt that the two shared numerous sources and analogues in selections of their poetry, were at least aware of each other personally, and were born into similar social backgrounds. What remains to be done, and what has received little critical attention in the decades since serious work began on the similarities between them, is a study of the ideological values that Chaucer and Froissart shared specifically evidenced in their writing. The ideas they wanted to promote, the contemporary moral and social debates they engaged in, are equally as fascinating as the similarities in their love poetry. I intend to go beyond the biographical and source study that has dominated discussion on Chaucer and Froissart and embark on a project of tracing thematic parallels in two of their works, specifically focusing on the issue that I find most obvious between them: the desire to create and record literary discussions of ethical behaviour.

My project is founded on an inter-genre, comparative approach between Chaucers <i>Franklins Tale</i> from the Canterbury collection, and Jean Froissarts <i>Chroniques</i>, the innovative and epic account of French history in the thirteenth century. I have adopted a method of thematic comparison between the two in an effort to illuminate parallels of example and authorial intent in the works of these almost exactly contemporaneous authors. My thesis therefore becomes a selective examination of the ethical functions of their literature.<p>Twentieth century scholarship focusing on the similarities between Geoffrey Chaucer and Jean Froissart has left little doubt that the two shared numerous sources and analogues in selections of their poetry, were at least aware of each other personally, and were born into similar social backgrounds. What remains to be done, and what has received little critical attention in the decades since serious work began on the similarities between them, is a study of the ideological values that Chaucer and Froissart shared specifically evidenced in their writing. The ideas they wanted to promote, the contemporary moral and social debates they engaged in, are equally as fascinating as the similarities in their love poetry. I intend to go beyond the biographical and source study that has dominated discussion on Chaucer and Froissart and embark on a project of tracing thematic parallels in two of their works, specifically focusing on the issue that I find most obvious between them: the desire to create and record literary discussions of ethical behaviour.