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The Image of Edward the Black Prince in Georgian and Victorian England: Negotiating the Late Medieval Past

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Barbara Gribling

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Abstract

During the Georgian and Victorian periods, the fourteenth-century hero Edward the Black Prince became an object of cultural fascination and celebration; he and his battles played an important part in a wider reimagining of the British as a martial people, reinforced by an interest in chivalric character and a burgeoning nationalism. Drawing on a wealth of literature, histories, drama, art and material culture, this book explores the uses of Edward’s image in debates about politics, character, war and empire, assessing the contradictory meanings ascribed to the late Middle Ages by groups ranging from royals to radicals. It makes a special claim for the importance of the fourteenth century in Georgian and Victorian culture as a time of heroic virtues, chivalric escapades, royal power and parliamentary development, adding to a growing literature on Georgian uses of the past by exposing an active royal and popular investment in the medieval. It reveals that the Middle Ages was a contested terrain in Victorian Britain, disputing frequent modern assumptions that the Victorians saw the medieval period as an idealised and unproblematic past.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Gribling B

Publication type: Authored Book

Publication status: Published

Series Title: Studies in History. New series

Year: 2017

Number of Pages: 171

Print publication date: 13/10/2017

Acceptance date: 14/08/2017

Publisher: The Royal Historical Society; Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: The Boydell Press

Place Published: London

Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item

ISBN: 9780861933426


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