Medieval Knighthood V

Studies treating a wide variety of aspects of knighthood. Topics include the way in which the word `knight' has been used studying the terminology and ritual concerned with `making a knight'; the circumstances and implications of the knighting of the social elite of England between 1066 and 1272; the difficulties of distinguishing between knight and clerk as exemplified by Abelard's multi-faceted image; the debt which Geoffrey de Charny's treatise on chivalry owes to the ideas and ideals of knighthood in Arthurian prose romances; and the linguistic competence of the twelfth-century knightly classes as courtly audience of troubadour song. There are also important contributions on the warhorse; and on the fortifications of fourteenth-century English towns arguing that they were more the expression of bourgeois aspirations than a response to serious military threat. Dr STEPHEN CHURCH teaches at St Mary's College Strawberry Hill; Dr RUTH HARVEY is lecturer in French Royal Holloway and Bedford New College. Contributors: RICHARD BARBER MATTHEW BENNETT JONATHAN BOULTON MICHAEL CLANCHY CHARLES COULSON RUTH HARVEY ELSPETH KENNEDY AD PUTTER