Thomas Hardy's Medieval Tournament Summary

A Summary of Hardy’s “Medieval Tournament” At its core, Hardy’s “Medieval Tournament: A Functional Sport of the Upper Class”, strived to educate on two fronts: as a historical account of medieval sport, and as an explanation to why and how these events developed and evolved. Using two points of comparison, the melee and the joust, the author explains that the social and cultural implications of vastly differing sports are both similar and contradictory. The melee first originated in the twelfth century, as an unregulated form of a battle simulation. Groups of knights engaged in war tactics and violent combat, with the goal of the melee being to capture the opponent(s) and hold them for ransom. Thus, many knights earned a living by participating