6/17/2023 0 Comments Song of roland chivalry codeThe descriptions of Arthur later in that same work continue to convey the same idea about the king. When he is first introduced in Book 9, as a 15-year-old who has just been crowned, he is described as having ‘unparalleled courage and generosity’. 1137, the description of Arthur matches this aforementioned description very well. In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae ( HRB), written in c. Admittedly, though, we cannot be completely certain that this description dates back to the original writing of the Historia Brittonum, since it is not in all versions. This is not a comprehensive description of all types of moral virtues, but it does reveal that Arthur was believed to have at least been magnanimous. In this manuscript version, Arthur is termed ‘magnanimous’. The first hint of Arthur as a symbol of exceptional virtue appears in one version of the Historia Brittonum. Development of the Code in Arthurian Lore Let us first look into the development of this courtly Code of Chivalry throughout the early development of Arthurian lore, and then we shall consider what the code actually was, as well as what historical basis it may have had. King Arthur’s reign was viewed as the idealised example of courtly virtue. The display of chivalry featured in the Arthurian legends had a profound impact on western society during the height of the popularity of those legends in Europe. It was expected that knights would temper their brutal and violent lifestyle with virtuous qualities and modes of conduct. In real life, codes of chivalry had been developed and propounded by different individuals and groups during the medieval period. These standards made Arthur’s reign the peaceful and glorious thing that it was famous for being, and the downfall of his kingdom is associated with the discarding of this Code of Chivalry. It was essentially the moral code of conduct by which Arthur and his men had resolved to live by. Through this literary analysis, supported by relevant medieval letters and documents, I hope to show that the concept of chivalry is more complicated than the knight simply riding out to save the damsel in distress.The Code of Chivalry in the Arthurian legends is not something that explicitly appears in the earliest records of Arthur, but it is a key aspect of the medieval romances. Bernard of Clairvaux’s exhortation of the Knights Templar. My thesis will explore this emergence and development of chivalry by looking at these three different aspects-secular/militaristic, religious, and courtly-specifically from the point of view of medieval chivalric texts, including the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes, heroic texts like The Song of Roland, and religious documents like St. At the same time, the idea of courtly love, which promoted the wooing of noble maidens as the ultimate goal of knighthood, emerged in southern France. By 1100, Christian ecclesiastics had appropriated the militaristic qualities of chivalry in order to promote religious warfare in the form of the crusades, transforming the knight into a holy warrior. The concept of chivalry emerged alongside medieval knighthood in the decades around 1000 C.E., with the express purpose of portraying knights as the elite, mounted fighting-force of Western Europe. Michael James Milligan, Honors Advisor Keywords:įew images in history are as provocative as the knight in shining armor, and few concepts of medieval knighthood are as romanticized as chivalry, the code-of-conduct that all knights were supposed to follow. Kathryn Elizabeth Salzer, Thesis Supervisorĭr.
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