Teaching and learning methods
- Weekly one-hour lecture and one-hour seminar
- An additional session on Essay Writing
- Field trip to Winchester
- Individual tutorials (preparation for essay and feedback)
This module aims at giving you an in-depth knowledge and understanding of chivalry and the chivalric culture in the Late Middle Ages. The approach is thematic. Each week a new theme will be examined. A lecture will set the framework (question, sources, state of current knowledge) while the appending seminar will be focused on one or two primary sources linked with the weekly theme. It is therefore essential that you attend both lectures and seminars.
The trip to Winchester may include a visit to the cathedral, the Westgate, Sally Port and the Great Hall to see the round table. Visits to these buildings will help you think about the spaces and places associated with knights, chivalry and the aristocratic culture. Participation on this trip is not a formal requirement of the module, although you are strongly encouraged to do so.
This module, like all of the 15 credit History modules offered to second year students, will be research led and it will focus heavily on primary sources. You will study an individual source in depth each week. As such, this module will provide you with a sound preparation for the source- based work undertaken in year 3 during the Special Subject and the dissertation.
Study time
| Type |
Hours |
| Follow-up work |
45 |
| Lecture |
11 |
| Completion of assessment task |
16 |
| Preparation for scheduled sessions |
45 |
| Seminar |
11 |
| External visits |
4 |
| Revision |
18 |
| Total study time |
150 |
Resources & Reading list
Textbooks
Kaeuper, R. W (1999). Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe. Oxford.
Loomis, R.S., ed (1959). Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages. Oxford.
Vale, M.G.A (1981). War and chivalry: warfare and aristocratic culture in England, France and Burgundy at the end of the Middle Ages. London.
Barber, R. and Barker, J.R.V (1989). Tournaments, jousts, chivalry and pageants in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge.
Trim, D.J.B., ed (2003). The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military Professionalism. Leiden.
Coss, P (1998). The Lady in Medieval England, 1000-1500. Trowbridge.
Saul, N. (2011). For Honour and Fame. Chivalry in England, 106-1500. London.
Keen, M (1996). Nobles, knights, and men-at-arms in the Middle Ages. London.
Stevenson, K (2006). Chivalry and knighthood in Scotland, 1424-1513. Woodbridge.
Keen, M (1984). Chivalry. New Haven and London.
Guard, T (2013). Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade: The English Experience in the fourteenth Century. Woodbridge.
Keen, M., (2002). Origins of the English gentleman: heraldry, chivalry and gentility in medieval England , c.1300-c.1500. Stroud.