Table Of ContentMedieval Literature and Social Politics
Medieval Literature and Social Politics brings together seventeen articles by
literary historian Stephen Knight.
T he book primarily focuses on the social and political meaning of medieval
literature, in the past and the present. It provides an account of how early heroic
texts relate to the issues surrounding leadership and conflict in Wales, France
and England, and how the myth of the Grail and the French reworking of Celtic
stories relate to contemporary society and its concerns. Further chapters examine
Chaucer’s readings of his social world, the medieval reworkings of the Arthur
and Merlin myths, and the popular social statements in ballads and other literary
forms. The concluding chapters examine the Anglo-nationalist ‘Arctic Arthur’,
and the ways in which Arthur, Merlin and Robin Hood can be treated in terms of
modern studies of the history of emotions and the environment.
T his book will be of interest to scholars and students of medieval Europe, as
well as those interested in social and political history, medieval literature and
modern medievalism.
S tephen Knight is Honorary Research Professor at the University of Melbourne,
Australia. He has previously worked at the University of Sydney, De Montfort
University and Cardiff University. He has published over twenty books.
Variorum Collected Studies
Also in the Variorum Collected Studies series
STEPHEN KNIGHT
Medieval Literature and Social Politics
Studies of Cultures and Their Contexts (CS1099)
EKMELEDDIN İHSANOGLU
Studies on Ottoman Science and Culture (CS1098)
DAVID S. BACHRACH and BERNARD S. BACHRACH
Writing Medieval Military History in Pre-Crusade Europe
Studies in Sources and Source Criticism (CS1097)
PAMELA M. KING, edited by Alexandra F. Johnston
Reading Texts for Performance and Performance as Texts
Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies (CS1096)
FELICE LIFSHITZ
Writing Normandy
Stories of Saints and Rulers (CS1095)
STEPHEN GERSH
Metaphysics and Hermeneutics in the Medieval Platonic Tradition (CS1094)
MICHAEL HESLOP
Medieval Greece
Encounters Between Latins, Greeks and Others in the Dodecanese and the Mani
(CS1093)
T.ABIRRELL, edited by Jos Blom, Frans Korsten and Frans
Blom
Aspects of Recusant History (CS1092)
PAMELA NIGHTINGALE
Mortality, Trade, Money and Credit in Late Medieval England (1285–1531)
(CS1091)
www.routledge.com/Variorum-Collected-Studies/book-series/VARIORUM
Medieval Literature and Social Politics
Studies of Cultures and Their Contexts
Stephen Knight
VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition © 2021 Stephen Knight
The right of Stephen Knight to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Knight, Stephen, 1940– author.
Title: Medieval literature and social politics : studies of cultures and their
contexts / Stephen Knight.
Description: London ; New York : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Variorum
collected studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020037460 (print) | LCCN 2020037461 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367511289 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003052548 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Literature, Medieval—History and criticism. | Civilization,
Medieval, in literature. | Literature and society—Europe—History.
Classification: LCC PN682.S7 K55 2021 (print) | LCC PN682.S7 (ebook) |
DDC 809/.93358207—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037460
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037461
ISBN: 978-0-367-51128-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-05254-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS1099
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
PART 1
Early classic texts and their contexts 5
1 ‘From Jerusalem to Camelot: King Arthur and the Crusades’,
in Medieval Codicology, Iconography, Literature and
Translation: Essays Presented to Keith Val Sinclair , ed.
by P. R. Monks and D. D. R. Owen (Leiden: Brill, 1994) 7
2 ‘Satire in Piers Plowman’ , in Piers Plowman : Critical Essays,
ed. by S. S. Hussey (London: Methuen, 1969) 21
3 ‘Chaucer and the sociology of literature’, Studies in the Age
of Chaucer , 2 (1980) 49
4 ‘Ideology in “The Franklin’s Tale”’, P arergon , 28 (1980) 67
5 ‘The social function of the Middle English romances’,
in Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology and History , ed.
by David Aers (Brighton: Harvester, 1986) 88
PART 2
Mythic and popular materials and their contexts 107
6 ‘Arthurian authorities: ideology in the legend of King Arthur’,
in Words and Worlds: Studies in the Social Role of Verbal
v
CONTENTS
Culture , ed. by Stephen Knight and S. N. Mukherjee (Sydney:
Sydney Association for Studies in Society and Culture, 1987) 109
7 ‘Why was “Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight” the most popular
ballad in Europe?’, in Medieval English Poetry , ed.
by Stephanie Trigg (London and New York: Longman, 1993) 122
8 ‘Rabbie Hood: the development of the English outlaw myth
in Scotland’, in Bandit Territories, ed. Helen Phillips
(Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2008) 139
9 ‘Robin Hood and the royal restoration’, Critical Survey,
5.3 (1993) 155
1 0 ‘Robin Hood and the Crusades: when and why did the
longbowman of the people mount up like a lord?’,
Florilegium, 23.1 (2006): 201–22 167
1 1 ‘The Arctic Arthur: patriotic medievalism’, A rthuriana,
21.2 (2011) 183
PART 3
Modern approaches to medieval materials 213
1 2 ‘Resemblance and menace: a post-colonial reading of Peredur’,
in Canhwyll Marchogyon: Cyd-destunoli Peredur (‘ Candle
of the Knights: Contextualising Peredur’), ed. by Sioned
Davies and Peter Wynn Thomas (Cardiff: University
of Wales Press, 2000) 215
1 3 ‘“Love’s altar is the forest glade”: Chaucer in the light
of Dafydd ap Gwilym’, Nottingham Medieval
Studies, 43 (1999) 231
1 4 ‘Chaucer’s fabliaux and late medieval structures of feeling’,
unpublished 247
1 5 ‘Medievalist comic relief: trashing the medieval in the
eighteenth century’, in postmedieval, 5 (2014) 260
1 6 ‘The social integration of emotion in early Arthurian
romance’, unpublished 275
vi
CONTENTS
17 ‘“Artful Thunder”: Merlin, wisdom and the environment’,
unpublished 285
Bibliography of publications 309
Index 313
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks are due to the wide range of editors and publishers who in a number of
cases have generously approved the reprinting of the material to which they own
the rights. Strenuous efforts have been made to contact all previous editors and
publishers to ascertain that if they still control the rights they will permit this
reprinting. In some cases the locations and controlling bodies for original pub-
lication are no longer functioning, but requests for permission have been made
wherever possible, and all responses made for the rights to reprint have been
positive.
viii
INTRODUCTION
The essays in this collection represent research written over several decades
focused on the social and political contexts of medieval literature, all dealing
in detail with texts and contexts that have not been covered closely in my books
on medieval literature. The essays have appeared in specialised and often hard-
to-find periodicals and essay-collections, and some, given as papers in the last
decade, are here published for the first time.
When completing a degree in English at Jesus College, Oxford, I was influ-
enced by having as tutors two young men who would later be recognised as major
international medieval scholars, the American V. A. Kolve, not long after finishing
his D.Phil. on medieval drama, and John Burrow, appointed as college tutor when
I was in second year and soon to publish a book that made him an authority on Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight.
A fter graduating I left Britain, like many colleagues of the time – I later wrote
we were refugees from Macmillan’s England. Having several Australian friends,
I headed in 1963 for Sydney University’s large Department of English, being
appointed to specialise in medieval literature, and met my third major influence,
George Russell, New Zealand-born Professor of Early English. Under his super-
vision I did a PhD on Piers Plowman – Russell was then editing the C Text, and
Langland was the centre of his rich knowledge of the medieval world and its con-
texts, especially social and religious. In addition to working on Langland I taught
widely across major medieval authors and texts, and after gaining the PhD in 1967
began publishing research in that area.
T he essays reprinted here are divided into three sections, representing three
domains of research, broadly moving through the phases of my career. The first
set, ‘Early Classic Texts and their Contexts’, are rather lengthy essays coming
mostly from when I was teaching and researching early medieval literature, pri-
marily English, but also extending into French material.
A n interest in the sociopolitical contexts of early texts was developed among
the range of medievalists at Sydney in History, English and Modern Languages,
as well as politically-aware people, notably in the Philosophy department. Unlike
in Oxford, these staff and their students interacted vigorously, and there was a
dynamic cross-discipline Medieval Society.
1
