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Robert W. Jones

A Cultural History of the Medieval Sword: Power, Piety and Play (Armour and Weapons, 11) Hardcover – May 23, 2023

by Dr Robert W Jones (Author)

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The sword is an important and multi-faceted symbol of military power, royal and communal authority, religion and mysticism. This study takes the sword beyond its functional role as a tool for killing, considering it as a cultural artefact, and the broader meaning and significance it had to its bearer.

It should be on the bookshelf of anybody who claims to be interested in the importance of the sword in medieval life and thought and their cultural significance in the past - and present. Robert Woosnam-Savage, Royal Armouries.

We see the sword as an object of nobility and status, a mystical artefact, imbued with power and symbolism. It is Roland's Durendal, Arthur's Excalibur, Aragorn's Narsil. A thing of beauty, its blade flashes in the sun, and its hilt gleams with opulent decoration. Yet this beauty belies a bloody function, for it is also a weapon that appears crude and brutal, requiring great strength to wield: cleaving armour, flesh, and bone.

This wide-ranging book uncovers the breadth of the sword's place within the culture of high medieval Europe. Encompassing swords both real and imagined, physical, and in art and literature, it shows them as a powerful symbol of authority and legitimacy. It looks at the practicalities of the sword, including its production, as well as challenging our preconceptions about when and where it was used. In doing so, it reveals a far less familiar culture of swordsmanship, beyond the elite, in which swordplay was an entertainment, taught in the fencing school by masters such as Lichtenauer, Talhoffer, and Fiore, and codified in fencing manuals, or fechtbücher. The book also considers how our modern attempts to reconstruct medieval swordsmanship on screen, and in re-enactment and Historical European Martial Arts (or HEMA), shape, and have been shaped by, our preconceptions of the sword. As a whole, the weapon is shown to be at once far more mundane, and yet just as special, as we imagine it.

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It should be on the bookshelf of anybody who claims to be interested in the importance of the sword in medieval life and thought and their cultural significance in the past - and present. -- Robert Woosnam-Savage

About the Author

Robert W. Jones is Alumni Association Coordinator and tutor at Advanced Studies in England, an independent study abroad programme based in Bath, England. He is also a Visiting Scholar in History at Franklin and Marshall College, Pennsylvania, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Boydell Press (May 23, 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1837650365
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1837650361
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.7 x 0.6 x 9.6 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,393,863 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #65 in Sword & Knife Collecting
- #1,294 in Conventional Weapons & Warfare History (Books)
- #28,242 in Engineering (Books)

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3.6 3 ratings

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Robert W. Jones

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I am a historian of the medieval period, specialising in the socio-cultural history of medieval warfare and warriors. Military history is very often considered the preserve of retired generals and focused on tedious narratives of battle and campaign. For me, warfare is a cultural phenomenon and its study should be as much about understanding the participants and their experience of battle as of the battles themselves. To my mind, the behaviour of the warriors on the battlefield was informed as much by the culture and society from which they came as by the practicalities of combat.

I came to military history from a background in reenactment and costumed interpretation (something I still do; I have my own fourteenth-century harness and am a practitioner and instructor of Historical European Martial Arts, focusing on medieval longsword combat), and so experiential learning (learning by doing) is a large part of my research.

It is one of the joys of working for Advanced Studies in England - a study abroad programme based in Bath, England, where I am the Alumni Association Coordinator - that not only am I supported in my on-going research but I also get to teach on the subjects of knighthood and chivalry, and military cultures to bright, enthusiastic students. That teaching invariably informs my thinking about my research and, I feel, improves the quality of my work.

I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Visiting Scholar in History at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania.

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