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The knight, the cross, and the song : Crusade propaganda and chivalric literature, 1100-1400 / Stefan Vander Elst.

by Vander Elst, Stefan Erik Kristiaan, author.

Philadelphia : (PENN) University of Pennsylvania Press, [2017]

Middle Ages series.

x, 270 pages ; 24 cm.

pt. I The chanson de geste in crusade propaganda -- 1. Pilgrims and Settlers -- 2. The Gesta Francorum -- 3. Robert of Reims's Historia Iherosolimitana -- 4. The Old French Crusade Cycle: Crusade as a War of Families -- pt. II Chivalric romance in crusade propaganda -- 5. The Challenge of Romance and the Thirteenth Century -- 6. Nicolaus of Jeroschin and the Fourteenth-Century Crusade -- 7. Adventure and the East in the Second Old French Crusade Cycle -- 8. The Ideal Crusader in La Prise d'Alixandre.

This volume offers a new perspective on the driving forces of crusading in the period 1100-1400. Although religious devotion has long been identified as the primary motivation of those who took the cross, Stefan Vander Elst argues that it was by no means the only focus of the texts written to convince the warriors of Western Christianity to participate in the holy war. Vander Elst examines how, across three centuries, historiographical works that served as exhortations for the Crusade sought specifically to appeal to aristocratic interests beyond piety. They did so by appropriating the formal and thematic characteristics of literary genres favored by the knightly class, the chansons de geste and chivalric romance. By using the structure, commonplaces, and traditions of chivalric literature, propagandists associated the Crusade with the decidedly secular matters to which arms-bearers were drawn. This allowed them to introduce the mutual obligation between lord and vassal, family honor, the thirst for adventure, and even the desire for women as parallel and complementary motivations for Crusade, making chivalric and literary concerns an indelible part of the ideology and practice of holy war.

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

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