his201 - lect 1 - week 12

New literary genres and the broaded cultural movements of the long 12th-century Renaissance.

The knights had an idea of chivalry. Chevalier, implies, bravery, honour and courtly love.

Their rituals centred around ceremonies which would pass these characteristic down throughout the generations and kept it within an elite group that truly deserved it and had earned those values of chivalry.

dubbing welcomed a young man into the knighthood, from an elder to a younger, these characteristics of chivalry. That's what the image on the hand out represents. Religiously this links the knight to the mediaeval ages with the religious struggles of antiquity. Knights represent a romanticism that was well depicted in new literary genre of the 12th and 13th centuries. Especially northern France, Normandy, Champagne, these stories occurred, these aristocratic knights living in a tower with a cleric, and these clerics would write the stories of chivalry. Amongst this time the higher levels of literacy allowed them to write these stories, and a greater interest in their history gave them motivation. And so we have a new literary genre in this period, alongside the biographies, hagiographies, and this genre is usually known as Chanson de geste. Songs/poems of adventure about a mythical historical past. And very often of the time of Charlemagne, written in the 12th century about the people in the 7th, 8th and sometimes 9th century. This most well known is the song of Roland. Story, poem, set in Spain after Charlemagne and his army concurred the northern regions. In 778, after the military campaign, Charlemagne is offered a truce by the king of the Saracens in the region, Saragossa, Saracens are the African Muslims. Happy with this outcome Charlemagne returns with much of the army and gives one of his generals, Gannelon, the task of negotiating the terms of the peace agreement. Gannelon thinks that this task is too dangerous and should be done by a subordinate. And so he betrays Charlemagne and tells the Saracens where they can nab the rear of Charlemagne's army. Roland, is heroic in the repelling of the Saracens, however, he dies.

There was probably a battle, there was probably a guy called Roland who was a general, however, the story of Roland is probably romanticised. There is a religious message entangled in all of this, but it is not a text aimed at solely a theological issue. Similar stories were being written in the same vernacular in other place, we have History of the King's of Britain, written by Geoffrey of Montmouth. We also have the Cantar del mio Cid. The Chanson de Geste was not the only genre to emerge in this vernacular during this time. The trabador's, who wrote shorter, more lyrical, love poems: fin amor. The authors were not cleric, we have poets writing these love poems. There was a clear separation between the sacred, monasteries were bastions of ascetic life, but outside of monasteries something else was happening. This would probably answer why you have a change in Gothic architecture. Anyway the message in these love poems was quite clear, men appeared as equals before love. This means that knights can fall in love with a noble women, even a married woman, just from sight, which has element of lust. Such honour and admiration would be gained through acts of chivalry and honour. The idea here is that courtly love is a term invented by historians ever since the late 19th century, the medieval term used for such acts of chivalry in the name of love is fin amor, Unblemished love. The idea is that a man of any other class would not act with such self restraint, another man from another social group would commit adultery or even rape. So peasants, and even kings, don't have this same valour this same sort of honour. They cannot stand back from the greed that may come from desire. The point is that this new genre of love poetry, was not necessarily connected to spiritual enlightenment, and was aimed at a much broader audience, to those who did not necessarily speak Latin, it spoke in vernacular. In this era when you have such diversity within different regions you just cannot expect the laity to be a completely hemogenous group, some of this literature reflects that.