Literature, Emotions, and Pre-Modern War

Claire McIlroy is an Honorary Research Fellow at The University of Western Australia and was an active member of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. Anne M. Scott is an Honorary Research Fellow at The University of Western Australia, and has published widely on Middle English literature.

• Preface: Andrew LynchIntroduction: The Long Reach of War, Claire McIlroy and Anne M. ScottPART I: THE EMOTIONAL COSTS OF WARChapter One: Love in Times of War: Some Shakespearean reflections, Robert S. WhiteChapter Two: “she shal bryngen us the pees on every syde”: The Ceremonial Restoration of Women in Late Medieval Culture, Stephanie Downes and Stephanie TriggChapter Three: Emotions and War in Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale”, Raluca RadulescuChapter Four: Making Dole inMalory, Karen CherewatukPART II: VOICING CONLFICTChapter Five: The Hero “Remembers”: gemunan in Beowulf and the Battle of Maldon, Ad PutterChapter Six: The Hard Parting: Conflicting Codes of fin’amors and Christian Duty in Medieval chansons de croisade, Helen DellChapter Seven: Christ versus Lucifer in Piers Plowman, Anne M. ScottChapter Eight: Breathing in Peace and War: Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, Corinne SaundersChapter Nine: Giving and Gaining Voice in Civil War: Alain Chartier’s Quadrilogue Invectif in Fifteenth-Century England, James SimpsonPART III: THE IMPACT OF WARChapter Ten: Oriental Despotism and the Reception of Romance, John M. GanimChapter Eleven: Belon, Palissy, Ronsard, and the War for the Forests of France, Susan BroomhallChapter Twelve: Holy War, Cold War: War, Comedy, and the Lessons of History in the Films of Mario Monicelli, LouiseD’Arcens

This is a fine collection of essays gathered to honor the academic career of Andrew Lynch, scholar of late medieval literature, warfare, and emotions. [...]Taken together, the essays provide fresh insights into the ways in which emotions are expressed in war. Grief, love, and courage are shown to be entangled in complex ways. All the essays explore the ways in which these emotions were both expressed and represented—implicitly then, the relationship between subjective experience, articulation, and representation becomes a rather interesting theme. Finally, memory plays a surprisingly key role throughout: memories of promises made before hostilities, memory in the form of trauma, even what White terms “proleptic nostalgia” (16)—the anticipation of memories about close fraternal bonds during battle. Through this emphasis on memory, war emerges not just as a series of cataclysmic moments, but an ongoing set of relationships and feelings which resonate across time.