The medieval warrior aristocracy : gifts, violence, performance, and the sacred

Resource Information

The work The medieval warrior aristocracy : gifts, violence, performance, and the sacred represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of San Diego Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The medieval warrior aristocracy : gifts, violence, performance, and the sacred

Title remainder

gifts, violence, performance, and the sacred

Statement of responsibility

Andrew Cowell

Creator

• Cowell, Andrew, 1963-

Subject

• Aristocracy (Social class) -- History -- To 1500
• Ceremonial exchange
• Ceremonial exchange -- History -- To 1500
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• Electronic books
• Heroes in literature
• Heroes in literature
• History
• Identity (Psychology)
• Identity (Psychology)
• LITERARY CRITICISM -- European | French
• LITERARY CRITICISM -- General
• Literature, Medieval
• Literature, Medieval -- History and criticism
• TRAVEL -- Special Interest | Literary
• To 1500
• Aristocracy (Social class)

Genre

• Electronic books
• History
• Criticism, interpretation, etc

Language

eng

Summary

The process of identity formation during the central Middle Ages [10th-12th centuries] among the warrior aristocracy was fundamentally centered on the paired practices of gift giving and violent taking, inextricably linked elements of the same basic symbolic economy. These performative practices cannot be understood without reference to a concept of the sacred, which anchored and governed the performances, providing the goal and rationale of social and military action. After focussing on anthropological theory, social history, and chronicles, the author turns to the "literary" persona of the hero as seen in the epic. He argues that the hero was specifically a narrative touchstone used for reflection on the nature and limits of aggressive identity formation among the medieval warrior elite; the hero can be seen, from a theoretical perspective, as a "supplement" to his own society, who both perfectly incarnated its values but also, in attaining full integrity, short-circuited the very mechanisms of identity formation and reciprocity which undergirded the society. The book shows that the relationship between warriors, heroes, and their opponents (especially Saracens) must be understood as a complex, tri-partite structure - not a simple binary opposition - in which the identity of each constituent depends on the other two

Member of

• Gallica (Woodbridge (Suffolk, England)), v. 6

Cataloging source

OCLCE

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

• dictionaries
• bibliography

Series statement

Gallica / Woodbridge, Suffolk, England,

Series volume

v. 6