Chivalry, c. 1250-1500

Learning Outcomes

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Demonstrate your ability to communicate effectively in the context of a written assessment
• Engage critically with primary sources
• Gather information and organise it into an accurate and coherent essay

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• The multiple facets of chivalry, as an order of knights, an ethos, a status and a concept
• Late medieval political, economic and social changes which impacted on chivalry
• Court culture in the late middle ages
• King Arthur's myth and Arthurian Romances

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Engage with the concept of laws and ethics of war
• Discuss confidently the didactic, normative, prescriptive nature of medieval chivalric treatises or romances and the idealistic nature of so-called chivalric chronicles and make a critical use of these primary sources
• Communicate accurately and clearly a range of knowledge and critical reflection in response to exam questions and essay topics
• Reflect on different definitions of honour
• Make well-supported judgments about the value of particular interpretations of the evidence.

Chivalry was mainly secular but it also embraced religious beliefs and crusading ideals. Chivalry dictated behaviours at war, but it also shaped court culture, drawing on Arthurian myth and romances and giving rise to elaborate forms of pageantry in tournaments, banquets, chivalric orders and ceremonies. Chivalry influenced as well the life, death and remembrance of the humble knight as it inspired good kingship.

These are among the main themes that we will be investigating in this module, using a wide variety of sources such as chivalric treatises, chronicles, romances, manuscript illuminations, and also material culture (including the Winchester Round Table).

Two lectures and one seminar per week

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.