Jousts and Tournaments

18696. (Steven Muhlberg­er) Jousts and Tour­na­ments ― Charny and the Rules for Chival­ric Sport in Four­teenth-Cen­tu­ry France

18697. (Geof­froi de Charny) Demands pour la joute, le tournoi, et la guerre [man­u­scripts edit­ed by Michael Antho­ny Tay­lor, tr. Steven Muhlberger]

Rather than bug Steve for a copy, I put myself on a library wait­ing list for his study of the rules of jousts and tour­na­ments of the Mid­dle Ages. I was on the list for over a year, before it turned up, which shows that there is a sig­nif­i­cant audi­ence for what appears, at first, to be an obscure top­ic. But I can see why, as the sub­ject is dealt with in a log­i­cal, order­ly fash­ion, and in his usu­al fine prose style. I par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoyed the chap­ter in which he draws on his knowl­edge of the mod­ern horse­man­ship scene to help imag­ine what the spot­ty his­tor­i­cal record does not tell us. The orig­i­nal text of Geof­froi de Charny’s “Ques­tions” in Mid­dle French is includ­ed, with a trans­la­tion by Steve.

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