Overview

The Chivalric Turn examines the medieval obsession with defining and practising superior conduct, and the social consequences that followed from it. Historians since the seventeenth century have tended to understand medieval conduct through the eyes of the writers of the Enlightenment, viewing superior conduct as 'knightly' behaviour, and categorising it as chivalry.Using, for the first time, the full range of the considerable twelfth- and thirteenth-century literature on conduct in the European vernaculars and in Latin, The Chivalric Turn describes and defines what superior lay conduct was in European society before chivalry, and maps how and why chivalry emerged and redefined superior conduct in the last generation of the twelfth century. The emergence of chivalry was only one part of a major social change, because it changed how people understood the concept of nobility, which had consequences for the medieval understanding of gender, social class, violence, and the limits of law.

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9780198830344

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Reviews

Medievalists working on identity and culture of the high Middle Ages will find this monograph particularly useful for its breadth and in-depth analysis of chivalric tracts, as will historians of the development of prescriptive behavioral codes over time. * Klayton Tietjen, Comitatus * Crouch handles the model and the exceptions with aplomb. His sources are primarily literary; as he himself says, his monograph is largely a study of ""genre."" Using normative sources such as conduct manuals, of which he displays a masterly command, Crouch exhaustively details the pan-European development and debate on elite self-definition via modes of behavior in the high Middle Ages. * Ken Mondschein, Speculum 96/3 *

Medievalists working on identity and culture of the high Middle Ages will find this monograph particularly useful for its breadth and in-depth analysis of chivalric tracts, as will historians of the development of prescriptive behavioral codes over time. * Klayton Tietjen, Comitatus * Crouch handles the model and the exceptions with aplomb. His sources are primarily literary; as he himself says, his monograph is largely a study of genre. Using normative sources such as conduct manuals, of which he displays a masterly command, Crouch exhaustively details the pan-European development and debate on elite self-definition via modes of behavior in the high Middle Ages. * Ken Mondschein, Speculum 96/3 *

Crouch handles the model and the exceptions with aplomb. His sources are primarily literary; as he himself says, his monograph is largely a study of genre. Using normative sources such as conduct manuals, of which he displays a masterly command, Crouch exhaustively details the pan-European development and debate on elite self-definition via modes of behavior in the high Middle Ages. * Ken Mondschein, Speculum 96/3 *

Author Information

David Crouch is retired Professor of Medieval History at the University of Hull. His many books have focused on areas of research surrounding the social and political history of the period from 1000 to 1300, primarily in England and France. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 2014.

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