English Literature and the Crusades

The period from the Mamlūk reconquest of Acre (1291) to the Ottoman siege of Constantinople (1453) witnessed the production of a substantial corpus of Middle English crusade romances. Marcel Elias places these romances in dialogue with multifarious European writings to offer a novel account of late medieval crusade culture: as ambivalent and self-critical, animated by tensions and debates, and fraught with anxiety. These romances uphold ideals of holy war while expressing anxieties about issues as diverse as God’s endorsement of the crusading enterprise, the conversion of Christians to Islam, the sinfulness of crusaders, and the morality of violence. Reinvigorating debates in medieval postcolonialism, drawing on emotion studies, and excavating a rich multilingual archive, this book is a major contribution to the cultural history of the crusades. This title is part of the Flip it Open programme and may also be available open access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Marcel Elias is Assistant Professor of English at Yale University. His essays on crusade literature, European representations of Muslims and Islam, and the history of emotions have appeared or are forthcoming in Speculum, Review of English Studies, New Medieval Literatures, Studies in Philology, and elsewhere.