Subject of Crusade

"Marisa Galvez challenges received ideas about medieval lyric poetry and Arthurian romance at a time when terms like "crusade," "medieval," and "holy war" continue to be tossed about unexamined in popular media in relation to Islamist fundamentalism. "The Subject of Crusade" offers a more complex view of crusade and holy war, arguing that vernacular crusade lyric and romance of the twelfth through fourteenth centuries and related visual artworks of the fifteenth century can tell us a different story if we read them as literary texts as much as historical documents. Placing chronicles and knightly handbooks in conversation with confessional and pastoral texts, she identifies a "crusade idiom" that emerged out of a conflict between what European poet/crusaders saw as their pious duty as Christian soldiers, on the one hand, and their earthly duties toward their clans, on the other. How, Galvez asks, does a Christian soldier articulate a sincere intention to go on a crusade while responsibilities toward family and fields at home intervene? Put another way: How does one affirm an intention to physically suffer in Syria in order to help save the Holy Land? Or how do courtly concerns differ for a Frankish knight in faraway Cyprus versus a lord in the relative security of Champagne? By placing crusade love lyric and romances in dialogue with pastoral and confessional documents, Galvez is able to read the conventions and tropes across genres usually kept separate as writers and artists respond to historical and moral problems of the day. The book gives a different picture of how lay people of the period thought about crusading"--