Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture Literatures of the Hundred Years War

This volume demonstrates how the Hundred Years War (1337–1453) provides a necessary context for late-medieval literature. It shows how war impacted the lives and works of major writers like Geoffrey Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, and Catherine of Siena, while also arguing for a transnational approach that moves beyond the Anglo-French core. This volume demonstrates how the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) provides a necessary context for late-medieval literature. Many of the major writers of the period, including Geoffrey Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, Giovanni Boccaccio and Bridget of Sweden, lived either all or most of their lives under war's shadow. The essays collected here investigate how authors use strategies including translation, adaptation and allegory to respond to the War. Simultaneously, they make a case for reconsidering how texts not generally seen as war literature, such as women's visionary writing or lyric poetry, form part of the broader context of European warfare. Extending the boundaries of what counts as war literature, the volume also moves beyond the traditional Anglo-French framing of the conflict by considering authors enmeshed in the conflict through proxy battles, diplomatic ties and ideological disputes. While covering English and French writers explicitly writing to the war, like John Lydgate or Alain Chartier, the book also explores the war writing of prominent Welsh, Scottish and Italian authors, including Dafydd ap Gwilym, Walter Bower and Catherine of Siena. Literatures of the Hundred Years War models a synthetic and transnational literary history of conflict that will pave the way for future scholarship in earlier and later periods. The essays in this volume show how literature did more than reflect the realities of the Hundred Years War; it was also a crucial site for contesting the claims of war as literary writers crafted ways to actively intervene in the conflict. From England and France to the Low Countries, Wales, Scotland, and Italy, the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) fundamentally shaped late-medieval literature. This volume adopts an expansive focus to reveal the transnational literary consequences of over a century of international conflict. While traditionally seen as an Anglo-French conflict, the Hundred Years War was a multilateral conflict with connections across the continent through alliances and proxy battles. Writers, whether as witnesses, diplomats, or provocateurs, played key roles in shaping the conflict, and the conflict equally impacted the course of literary history. The volume shows how a wide variety of genres and works are deeply engaged with responses to the war, from women’s visionary writing by figures like Catherine of Siena to anonymous lyric poetry, from Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies to Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.