The Rusted Hauberk

by Purdon, Liam O.; Vitto, Cindy L.

• ISBN13: 9780813012827
• ISBN10: 0813012821
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-05-28
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Florida

Summary

The metaphor of the hauberk, a tunic of chain mail that rusts over time, shapes and unifies this investigation of medieval culture. These essays question the very rubric of the feudal ideal, demonstrating that in historical and legal practice, and in imaginative and didactic writing, a breach often exists between ideal and practice. The authors challenge the notion of a fixed historical construct, emphasizing instead that all constructs must be elastic to allow historical perspectives to enlarge.

Author Biography

Liam O. Purdon is professor of English at Doane College in Crete, Nebraska.  He has published articles in English Language Notes, Philological Quarterly, Studies in Philology, and Medievalia et Humanistica. Cindy L. Vitto is associate professor of English at Rowan College of New Jersey in Glassboro. She is the author of The Virtuous Pagan in Middle English Literature.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. xiii
Resisting Dissolution Validating Feudal Ideals of Order	p. 1
Feudal Relations And Reason in Cleanness	p. 5
Notes	p. 24
Imagining Feudalism In Piers Plowman Attempts to Restore an Order	p. 29
Notes	p. 43
Containing Change Modifying Feudal Ideals of Order	p. 47
Potency and Power Chaucer's Aristocrats And Their Linguistic Superiority	p. 49
Notes	p. 73
Chivalry And Feudal Obligation In Barbour's Bruce	p. 77
Notes	p. 92
Disenfranchising Women Limiting Feudal Ideals of Order	p. 97
As Good as Her Word Women's Language In The Knight of the Tour D'Landry	p. 99
Notes	p. 119
Men's Theory And Women's Reality Rape Prosecutions in the English Royal Courts of Justice, 1194-1222	p. 121
Notes	p. 153
Experiencing Feudal Realities Enduring Feudal Ideals of Order	p. 161
Par Amur Et Par Feid Keeping Faith and the Varieties of Feudalism In La Chanson De Roland	p. 163
Notes	p. 196
When Feudal Ideals Failed Conflicts Between Lords and Vassals In the Low Countries, 1127-1296	p. 201
Notes	p. 223
Rejecting Chivalry Reinscribing Feudal Ideals of Order	p. 227
Feudal Chivalry in Popular Medieval Battle Poems	p. 229
Notes	p. 243
The Roman De Jaufre And the Illusions of Romance	p. 245
Notes	p. 261
Surveying Ruins Considering the Absence of Feudal Ideals of Order	p. 267
Chaucer Subjectivizes the Oath Depicting the Fall from Feudalism Into Individualism in the Canterbury Tales	p. 269
Notes	p. 293
John Rastell And The Norman Conquest Tudor Theories About the Feudal Age	p. 299
Notes	p. 307
Afterword: Chivalry and the Other	p. 309
Notes	p. 316
Contributors	p. 318
Index	p. 321
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