Nobility

A Courtier’s Mirror: Cultivating Elite Identity in Thomasin Von Zerclaere’s Welscher Gast

May 12, 2022

By Kathryn Starkey (NHC Fellow, 2008–09) A Courtier's Mirror establishes the unique importance of Thomasin von Zerclaere's Welscher Gast as a document of social practices and concerns in medieval German-speaking court society. This epic-length illustrated didactic poem enjoyed immense popularity in the Middle Ages, resulting in twenty-five redactions produced over two hundred and fifty years. Through a detailed … Continued

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Nobility Reimagined: The Patriotic Nation in Eighteenth-Century France

May 12, 2022

By Jay M. Smith (NHC Fellow, 1997–98) The mature nationalism that fueled the French Revolution grew from patriotic sensibilities fostered over the course of a century or more. Jay M. Smith proposes that the French thought their way to nationhood through a process of psychic adjustment premised on the reimagining of nobility, a social category … Continued

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Reorientations of Western Thought from Antiquity to the Renaissance

May 12, 2022

By F. Edward Cranz (NHC Fellow, 1981–82) The previous Variorum collection of studies by the late F. Edward Cranz focused specifically on Nicholas of Cusa. The present selection has an equally clear focus, but a far broader scope: it brings together materials on his major thesis, of a fundamental reorientation of the categories of thought … Continued

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The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing, and Identity During the Hundred Years’ War

May 12, 2022

By Susan Crane (NHC Fellow, 1999–00) Medieval courtiers defined themselves in ceremonies and rituals. Tournaments, Maying, interludes, charivaris, and masking invited the English and French nobility to assert their identities in gesture and costume as well as in speech. These events presumed that performance makes a self, in contrast to the modern belief that identity … Continued

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