Reading And War In Fifteenth Century England

Reading, writing and the prosecution of warfare went hand in hand in the fifteenth century, demonstrated by the wide circulation and ownership of military manuals and ordinances, and the integration of military concerns into a huge corpus of texts; but their relationship has hitherto not received the attention it deserves, a gap which this book remedies, arguing that the connections are vital to the literary culture of the time, and should be recognised on a much wider scale. Beginning with a detailed consideration of the circulation of one of the most important military manuals in the Middle Ages, Vegetius' De re militari, it highlights the importance of considering the activities of a range of fifteenth-century readers and writers in relation to the wider contemporary military culture. It shows how England's wars in France and at home, and the wider rhetoric and military thinking those wars generated, not only shaped readers' responses to their texts but also gave rise to the production of one of the most elaborate, rich and under-recognised pieces of verse of the Wars of the Roses in the form of 'Knyghthode and bataile'. It also indicates how the structure, language and meaning of canonical texts, including those by Lydgate and Malory, were determined by the military culture of the period.

It was the period when the French beat the English and the English fought among themselves. Traditional historians have glossed over it, considering it the time that wrecked Britain's military greatness. But Gillingham elegantly separates myth from reality, arguing that, paradoxically, the wars actually proved how peaceful the country was. His gifted graphic description makes this exciting and dramatic throughout. “Incisively written and highly readable.”—Sunday Times. “Gillingham informs us...with such verve, with and intelligence that we are left dazzled and delighted.”—History.

Primary sources for the Hundred Years War present the realities of the medieval experience of warfare in England and in France.

The conflict between England and France in the 14th and 15th centuries never ceases to fascinate. This stimulating edited collection, inspired by the Problems in Focus volume originally published in 1971, provides a fresh and accessible insight into the key aspects of The Hundred Years War. With chapters written by leading experts in the field, based on new methodologies and recent advances in scholarship, this book places the Anglo-French wars into a range of wider contexts, such as politics, the home front, the church, and chivalry. Adopting a sustained comparative approach, with attention paid to both England and France, The Hundred Years War Revisited provides a clear and comprehensive synthesis of the major trends in research on the Hundred Years War. Concise and thought-provoking, this is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of medieval history.

Reading English Verse in Manuscript, c.1350-c.1500 is the first book-length history of reading for later Middle English poetry. While much past work in the history of reading has revolved around marginalia, this book consults a wider range of evidence, from the weights of books in medieval bindings to relationships between rhyme and syntax. It combines literary-critical close readings, detailed case studies of particular surviving codices, and systematic manuscript surveys drawing on continental European traditions of quantitative codicology to demonstrate the variety, vitality, and formal concerns visible in the reading of verse in this period. The small-and large-scale formal features of poetry affected reading subtly but extensively, determining how readers might move through books and even shaping physical books themselves. Readers' responses to one formal feature, rhyme, meanwhile, evince a habitual but therefore deep-rooted formalism which can support and enhance close readings today. Reading English Verse in Manuscript sheds fresh light on poets such as Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, and Thomas Hoccleve, but also shows how their works were read in manuscript in the context of a much larger mass of anonymous poems that influenced canonical poems, in a pattern of mutual influence.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.