HA4322 Art in the Age of Chivalry, c.1150-1350
Module Organiser: Dr Laura Cleaver
Duration of the Module: Not Available 2017-18
Contact Hours: 1 lecture pw, and 1 seminar per fortnight
Weighting: 10 ECTS
The vast majority of surviving medieval objects were both made for and preserved by the church. This material has thus tended to dominate the study of medieval art and architecture. Church and state cannot be entirely divorced in this period, but this module will focus on objects made for other contexts; courts, noble households, and individual patrons from a range of social groups. The module will sift the very limited surviving evidence for courtly and chivalric visual culture to explore key themes found in the material. These will include social status, wealth and power, warfare, courtly love and romance, intellectual life, patronage and death. The module will cover a two-hundred year time period, from the cultural renaissance of the twelfth century to the devastation of the Black Death in the fourteenth century. We will focus on material produced in the Anglo-Norman world, as its boundaries shifted.