Romance & Legend of Chivalry

Fülszöveg

'i ROMANCE AND LEGEND
OF CHIVALRY ! A. R. HOPE MONCRIEFF
Strong sword-arm and stout armour - these alone did not make a knight. Prowess and skill at arms were of little avail unless joined with honour, loyalty and courtesy. Thus fortified, nothing need daunt the knight errant while there were damsels in distress, dragons and villains to be slain or injustice to redress.
Forests, castles and tournament lists are the settings for these famous tales of romance and chivalry. Sung by minstrels in the courts of kings ' and princes, they portrayed an ideal of behaviour
and aspiration for the noble classes. But chivalry was more than a mere code of behaviour; it was a moral system that embraced the whole of a noble's life. International in scope and application, it bonded together the warrior class of Europe with j common ideals and standards on and off the
i battlefield, a glamorous veneer over the grim
reality of medieval warfare.
Some of the stories were based on poetic legends;... Tovább

Fülszöveg

'i ROMANCE AND LEGEND
OF CHIVALRY ! A. R. HOPE MONCRIEFF
Strong sword-arm and stout armour - these alone did not make a knight. Prowess and skill at arms were of little avail unless joined with honour, loyalty and courtesy. Thus fortified, nothing need daunt the knight errant while there were damsels in distress, dragons and villains to be slain or injustice to redress.
Forests, castles and tournament lists are the settings for these famous tales of romance and chivalry. Sung by minstrels in the courts of kings ' and princes, they portrayed an ideal of behaviour
and aspiration for the noble classes. But chivalry was more than a mere code of behaviour; it was a moral system that embraced the whole of a noble's life. International in scope and application, it bonded together the warrior class of Europe with j common ideals and standards on and off the
i battlefield, a glamorous veneer over the grim
reality of medieval warfare.
Some of the stories were based on poetic legends; others blended fact and fiction. They began as entertainments in verse, composed in the old Romance languages of northern France, a blend of various barbaric dialects with degraded Latin that emerged after the fall of the Roman Empire and the break-up of Gaul. Into this melHng-pot went legends and tales from far and wide: distilled Celtic traditions from Wales and Brittany; Carolovingian romance from the Pyrenees; the Nibelungenlied from the mountains of Swabia and Austrasia; legends of Alexander and Troy from the classical world across the Alps. Later, from the more distant east, the Crusades brought yet more colourful tales, parables and fables with new themes and settings - rich palaces, magic unguents, powerful talismans, enchanted gardens.
When minstrels gradually went out of fashion, romance took on a new lease of life in prose form, reaching a height of development when printing came to give them wider currency and to preserve them for later generations. By the sixteenth century the romance of decayed chivalry had fallen into ruins, but the stories remained, to inspire a new and greater literature. In Romance and Legends of Chivalry, A. R. Hope Moncrieff presents a lucid and engaging survey of these historic tales, and introduces some of the best of these many stories, including King Arthur and the Round Table, and the Carolovingian romances of Roland and Oliver and Roncesvalles. There are 36 illustrations.
sy^in X 5y4in; 488 pages, including 36 pages of plates A facsimile of the original edition Vissza