Of Armor and Men in Medieval England
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€192.20
A01=Rachel Ann essler
Armored Effigies
Artistic Imperatives
Artistic Ramifications
Author_Rachel Ann essler
Category=AFK
Category=NHB
Chevalier De La Charret
Conway Library
County Knight
Cross-legged Effigies
Cross-legged Knight
De La Beche
DE VERE
Earl's Colne
Earl’s Colne
Edward III
English Military Effigies
English Military Figures
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eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
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eq_non-fiction
Fourteenth Century Date
funerary monuments
Hatfield Broad Oak
Henry III
Humphrey De Bohun
King Edward III
knight effigy gender identity
Knightly Effigies
Knightly Rank
masculinity studies
medieval sculpture
Raoul De Cambrai
Robert De Lisle
social hierarchy England
thirteenth century history
Tomb Chest
visual rhetoric medieval
Younger Man
Product details
- ISBN 9780754633686
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 17 Feb 2004
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Despite the profusion of knightly effigies created between c. 1240 and c. 1330 for tombs throughout the British Isles, these commemorative figures are relatively unknown to art historians and medievalists. Until now, their rich visual impact and significance has been relatively unexplored by scholars. In this study, Rachel Dressler examines this category of sculpture, illustrating how English military figures employ a visual language of pose, costume, and attributes to construct a masculine ideal that privileges fighting prowess, elite status, and sexual virility. Like military figures on the Continent, English effigies represent knights wearing chain mail and surcoats, and bearing shields and swords; unique to the British examples, however, is the display of an aggressive sword handling pose and dynamically crossed legs. Outwardly hyper masculine, the carved figures partake in artistic subterfuge: the lives of those memorialized did not always match proffered images, testifying to the changing function of the knight in England during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. This study traces the development of English military figures, and analyzes in detail three fourteenth-century examples-those commemorating Robert I De Vere in Hatfield Broad Oak (Essex), Richard Gyvernay at Limington (Somerset), and Henry Allard in Winchelsea (Sussex). Similar in appearance, these three sculptures represent persons of distinctly different social levels: De Vere belonged to the highest aristocratic rank, where Gyvernay was a lesser county knight, and Allard was from a merchant family, raising questions about his knightly standing. Ultimately, Dressler's analysis of English knight effigies demonstrates that the masculine warrior during the late Middle Ages was frequently a constructed ideal rather than a lived experience.
Rachel Ann Dressler, SUNY at Albany, USA
