English Literature and the Crusades: Anxieties of Holy War, 1291-1453

The period from the Mamlūk reconquest of Acre (1291) to the Ottoman siege of Constantinople (1453) witnessed the production of a substantial corpus of Middle English crusade romances. Marcel Elias places these romances in dialogue with multilingual European writings to offer a novel account of late medieval crusade culture: as ambivalent and self-critical, animated by tensions and debates, and fraught with anxiety. These romances uphold ideals of holy war while expressing anxieties about God's endorsement of the crusading enterprise, the conversion of crusaders to Islam, the inadequacy of Christian warriors vis-à-vis their Muslim counterparts, and the morality of violence. Reinvigorating debates in medieval postcolonial studies, drawing on emotion studies, and connecting English texts to European and Mediterranean traditions, this book expands the field in new directions. This title is part of the Flip it Open programme and may also be available open access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.