Book contents
- The Cambridge World History of Violence
- The Cambridge History of Violence
- The Cambridge World History of Violence
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures and Table
- Contributors to Volume II
- Introduction to Volume II
- Part I Beyond Warfare: Armies, Tribes and Lords
- Part II The Violence of Governments and Rulers
- Part III Social, Interpersonal and Collective Violence
- Part IV Religious, Sacred and Ritualised Violence
- Part V Depictions of Violence
- 25 Obligation, Substitution and Order
- 26 Representations of Violence in Imperial China
- 27 Revealing the Manly Worth: Cut Flesh in the Heavenly Disorder of Medieval Japan
- 28 Picturing Violence in the Islamic Lands
- 29 Scenes of Violence in Arabic Literature
- 30 Violence Is the Name of the [Bad] Game: The Downside of Human Nature as Reflected in Medieval Literature
- 31 Violence and the Force of Representation in European Art
- Index
- References
30 - Violence Is the Name of the [Bad] Game: The Downside of Human Nature as Reflected in Medieval Literature
from Part V - Depictions of Violence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 March 2020
- The Cambridge World History of Violence
- The Cambridge History of Violence
- The Cambridge World History of Violence
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures and Table
- Contributors to Volume II
- Introduction to Volume II
- Part I Beyond Warfare: Armies, Tribes and Lords
- Part II The Violence of Governments and Rulers
- Part III Social, Interpersonal and Collective Violence
- Part IV Religious, Sacred and Ritualised Violence
- Part V Depictions of Violence
- 25 Obligation, Substitution and Order
- 26 Representations of Violence in Imperial China
- 27 Revealing the Manly Worth: Cut Flesh in the Heavenly Disorder of Medieval Japan
- 28 Picturing Violence in the Islamic Lands
- 29 Scenes of Violence in Arabic Literature
- 30 Violence Is the Name of the [Bad] Game: The Downside of Human Nature as Reflected in Medieval Literature
- 31 Violence and the Force of Representation in European Art
- Index
- References
Summary
Violence emerges many times in medieval literature, either in the form of war or of personal violence. This paper examines a selection of narratives where various types of domestic violence and criminal activities leading to or based on violence are presented. Against the backdrop of an intensive theological and philosophical discourse on violence from St. Augustine to Thomas Aquinas, this chapter investigates violence in the private spheres of married couples (Marie de France), in the public sphere of the court to eliminate a threatening outsider (Nibelungenlied), within the family, pitting a mother-in-law against her daughter in law (Mai und Beaflor), which ultimately leads to matricide, then among friends and relatives (Boccaccio’s Decameron), and finally violence in the name of personal self-defence (Heinrich Kaufringer). As the analysis demonstrates, violence was ubiquitous in medieval society, but the poets always reflect also on legal conditions, the threat to society at large resulting from violence, and on the position of the individual when confronted with violence.
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- The Cambridge World History of Violence , pp. 623 - 644Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020