The Modern Language Review · 1996 · 32 citations · 0 references
Medieval LiteratureEuropean Private LawPhilosophy Of HistoryItalian StudiesSouthern FranceHistorical ScholarshipGerman LiteratureCourt CultureComparative LiteratureLiterary CriticismLanguage StudiesClassicsIntellectual HistoryGrand TourLiterary StudyFrench LiteratureItalian RenaissanceTheatreItalian LiteratureScenographyOttonian GermanyComparative LawSixteenth Century StudiesLiterary HistoryMedieval StudiesArtsChivalry StudiesTheatre Study
The book surveys courtly manners, manhood, and court life from the late Holy Roman Empire to the Italian Renaissance, tracing continuity across German, French, and Italian cultures. It aims to provide scholars and students with a comprehensive overview of the civilizing process through the lens of court culture. The author analyzes key literary works such as the Niebelungenlied, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and treatises on conduct up to Castiglione and his successors. The study shows that courtly culture, shaped by a minority of courtiers and knights, exerted enduring influence over the minds and hearts of society.
Knights at Court is a grand tour and survey of manners, manhood, and court life in Middle Ages, like no other in print. Composed on an epic canvas, this authoritative work traces development of court culture and its various manifestations from latter years of Holy Roman Empire (ca. A.D. 1000) to Italian Renaissance of fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Leading medievalist and Renaissance scholar Aldo Scaglione offers a sweeping sociological view of three geographic areas that reveals a surprising continuity of courtly forms and motifs: German romances; lyrical and narrative literature of northern and southern France; Italy's chivalric poetry.Scaglione discusses a broad number of texts, from early Norman and Flemish baronial chronicles to romances of Chretien de Troyes, troubadours and Minnesingers. He delves into Niebelungenlied, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and an array of treatises on conduct down to Castiglione and his successors. All these works and Scaglione's superior scholarship attest to enduring power over minds and hearts of a mentality that issued from a small minority of people - courtiers and knights - in central positions of leadership and power. Knights at Court is for all scholars and students interested in the civilizing process.