Raoul De Cambrai

La Chanson de Roland, dont on a coutume de la rapprocher, est un drame collectif; c'est l'epopee de la bataille, l'exallation des vertus guerrieres, courage et sacrifce. Raoul de Cambrai, au contraire, est un drame tout individuel; c'est l'expose d'un cas de conscience, la premiere ebauche, barbare et vigoreuse, d'une etude du remords.

Raoul de Cambrai is one of the most violent and passionate Old French poems of the cycle of barons in revolt. The three relations that structure medieval society - companionship, feudalism, and the family - are here seen in crisis. Conflicts of interest, and the competition for resources,result in social disintegration, wholesale loss of life, and the collapse of authority. The poem, probably composed around the turn of the thirteenth century, results from successive reworkings that weave a many-layered commentary on its own moral and political themes. This first edition for over ahundred years draws on important manuscript material unknown to the text's previous editors. It is prefaced by a scholarly introduction and accompanied by an annotated translation into English prose.

"The different cultures from which the middle ages drew its inspiration are represented: Cu Cuchulainn from the Celtic world, Apollonius of Tyre from Greek romance, Attila the Hun and Theodoric the Ostrogoth from the struggle of the Roman empire against the Barbarians. Each entry gives an outline of the story, how it spread through Europe, its modern retelling and appearances in art, and a selective bibliography."--Jacket.

An important set of historical essays on England and Normandy from the tenth to the thirteenth century.

Medieval Europe was a rapidly developing society with a problem of violent disorder. Professor Kaeuper's original and authoritative study reveals that chivalry was just as much a part of this problem as it was its solution. Chivalry praised heroic violence by knights, and fused such displaysof prowess with honour, piety, high-status, and attractiveness to women. Though the vast body of chivalric literature praised chivalry as necessary to civilization, most texts also worried over knightly violence, criticized the ideals and practices of chivalry, and often proposed reforms. Theknights themselves joined the debate, absorbing some reforms, ignoring others, sometimes proposing their own. The interaction of chivalry with major governing institutions ("church" and "state") emerging at that time was similarly complex: kings and clerics both needed and feared the force of theknighthood. This fascinating book lays bare these conflicts and paradoxes which surrounded the concept of chivalry in medieval Europe.