Chivalry
Outline: Q.1
Intro: • Chivalry, or the chivalric code, is the traditional code of conduct associated with the medieval institution of knighthood.
Thesis: In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and Barbara Tuchman’s The Code of Chivalry and Courtly Love, both authors describe qualities of a knight. Some main characteristics of a knight included loyalty, prowess, and courtly love
P.1: Loyalty: the quality of being loyal to someone or something
Quote 1: “Loyalty, meaning the pledged word, was chivalry’s fulcrum. The extreme emphasis given to it derived from the time when a pledge between lord and vassal was the only form of government.” (Tuchman, 207)
Quote 2: “The concept of loyalty did not preclude treachery or the most egregious trickery as long as no knightly oath was broken” (Tuchman, 207)
P.2: Prowess: • bravery in battle
Quote 1: “Fighting filled the noble’s need of something to do, a way to exert himself. It was his substitute for work.”
Quote 2: • “They expose themselves to every peril: they give up their bodies to the adventure of life in death. Moldy bread or biscuit, meat cooked or uncooked: today enough to eat, tomorrow nothing, little or no wine, water from a pond or a butt, bad quarters…” (Tuchman)
P.3: Courtly Love: a greater tangle of irreconcilables
Concept: • Knights thought of love with another’s wife romantic – Tuchman
Quote 1: • “The fact that courtly love idealized guilty love added one more complication to the maze through which medieval people threaded their lives” (Tuchman, 209)
Quote 2: • “Courtly love was understood by its contemporaries to be love for its own sake, romantic love, true love, physical love…” (Tuchman, 208)
Quote 3: • “The chivalric love affair moved from worship through declaration of passionate devotion, virtuous rejection by the lady, renewed wooing with oaths of eternal fealty, moans of approaching death from unsatisfied desire, heroic deeds of valor which won the lady’s heart by
Intro: • Chivalry, or the chivalric code, is the traditional code of conduct associated with the medieval institution of knighthood.
Thesis: In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and Barbara Tuchman’s The Code of Chivalry and Courtly Love, both authors describe qualities of a knight. Some main characteristics of a knight included loyalty, prowess, and courtly love
P.1: Loyalty: the quality of being loyal to someone or something
Quote 1: “Loyalty, meaning the pledged word, was chivalry’s fulcrum. The extreme emphasis given to it derived from the time when a pledge between lord and vassal was the only form of government.” (Tuchman, 207)
Quote 2: “The concept of loyalty did not preclude treachery or the most egregious trickery as long as no knightly oath was broken” (Tuchman, 207)
P.2: Prowess: • bravery in battle
Quote 1: “Fighting filled the noble’s need of something to do, a way to exert himself. It was his substitute for work.”
Quote 2: • “They expose themselves to every peril: they give up their bodies to the adventure of life in death. Moldy bread or biscuit, meat cooked or uncooked: today enough to eat, tomorrow nothing, little or no wine, water from a pond or a butt, bad quarters…” (Tuchman)
P.3: Courtly Love: a greater tangle of irreconcilables
Concept: • Knights thought of love with another’s wife romantic – Tuchman
Quote 1: • “The fact that courtly love idealized guilty love added one more complication to the maze through which medieval people threaded their lives” (Tuchman, 209)
Quote 2: • “Courtly love was understood by its contemporaries to be love for its own sake, romantic love, true love, physical love…” (Tuchman, 208)
Quote 3: • “The chivalric love affair moved from worship through declaration of passionate devotion, virtuous rejection by the lady, renewed wooing with oaths of eternal fealty, moans of approaching death from unsatisfied desire, heroic deeds of valor which won the lady’s heart by