Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- The De re militari of Vegetius in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
- Heroes of War: Ambroise's Heroes of the Third Crusade
- Warfare in the Works of Rudolf von Ems
- Chronicling the Hundred Years War in Burgundy and France in the Fifteenth Century
- War and Knighthood in Christine de Pizan's Livre des faits d'armes et de chevallerie
- Barbour's Bruce: Compilation in Retrospect
- ‘Peace is good after war’: The Narrative Seasons of English Arthurian Tradition
- The Invisible Siege – The Depiction of Warfare in the Poetry of Chaucer
- Warfare and Combat in Le Morte Darthur
- Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing
- Speaking for the Victim
- Index
The Invisible Siege – The Depiction of Warfare in the Poetry of Chaucer
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- The De re militari of Vegetius in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
- Heroes of War: Ambroise's Heroes of the Third Crusade
- Warfare in the Works of Rudolf von Ems
- Chronicling the Hundred Years War in Burgundy and France in the Fifteenth Century
- War and Knighthood in Christine de Pizan's Livre des faits d'armes et de chevallerie
- Barbour's Bruce: Compilation in Retrospect
- ‘Peace is good after war’: The Narrative Seasons of English Arthurian Tradition
- The Invisible Siege – The Depiction of Warfare in the Poetry of Chaucer
- Warfare and Combat in Le Morte Darthur
- Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing
- Speaking for the Victim
- Index
Summary
ONLY a fortunate few in medieval Europe can have escaped experiencing the physical facts of war, its dangers and privations, and the psychological corollary – the fear and anticipation of war, the pains of grief, and the social dislocation which resulted from war. Armed conflict in its diverse manifestations was an anticipated trial of medieval life, and one could expect that medieval literature would be replete with images of warfare. It is the more striking, then, that the extensive poetic oeuvre of Geoffrey Chaucer's work is notable for the infrequency of the appearance of feats of arms and scenes of chivalric prowess. That a poet so conscious of his relationship to the ‘authoritative’ literature of the past should choose not to drink from so major a fountain-head of themes and styles from the Epic, Tragic and Romance traditions demands explanation. In justifying the writing of a book entitled Chaucer and War, Pratt ventures the claim:
Yet Chaucer, the writer, could not have failed to produce commentary on war, for he lived in an age of military conflict.
It proves impossible, however, to read Chaucer's works as mirrors of the violence of his times, or as commentary either on specific conflicts or on the nature of war itself. Chaucer's refusal to use the stock tropes of literary heroism as foundation stones of his narrative, or even as garnish, proves to be a key strategy in revealing both his awareness of the centrality of the ideology of war in the perpetuation of the aristocratic culture of his day, and his need to evade the expectations this imposed on him as a writer.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Writing WarMedieval Literary Responses to Warfare, pp. 147 - 168Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2004