{"product_id":"rebel-barons-resisting-royal-power-in-medieval-culture-9780198788485","title":"Rebel Barons: Resisting Royal Power in Medieval Culture","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Luke Sunderland\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: Oxford University Press, USA\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: Medieval\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAmbivalence towards kings, and other sovereign powers, is deep-seated in medieval culture: sovereigns might provide justice, but were always potential tyrants, who usurped power and 'stole' through taxation. \u003cem\u003eRebel Barons\u003c\/em\u003e writes the history of this ambivalence, which was especially acute in England, France, and Italy in the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, when the modern ideology of sovereignty, arguing for monopolies on justice and the legitimate use of violence, was developed. Sovereign powers asserted themselves militarily and economically provoking complex phenomena of resistance by aristocrats. This volume argues that the \u003cem\u003echansons de geste\u003c\/em\u003e, the key genre for disseminating models of violent noble opposition to sovereigns, offer a powerful way of understanding acts of resistance. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTraditionally seen as France's epic literary monuments - the \u003cem\u003eChanson de Roland\u003c\/em\u003e is often presented as foundational of French literature - \u003cem\u003echansons de geste \u003c\/em\u003ein fact come from areas antagonistic to France, such as Burgundy, England, Flanders, Occitania, and Italy, where they were reworked repeatedly from the twelfth century to the fifteenth and recast into prose and chronicle forms. Rebel baron narratives were the principal vehicle for aristocratic concerns about tyranny, for models of violent opposition to sovereigns and for fantasies of escape from the Carolingian world via crusade and Oriental adventures.\u003cem\u003e Rebel Barons\u003c\/em\u003e reads this corpus across its full range of historical and geographical relevance, and through changes in form, as well as placing it in dialogue with medieval political theory, to bring out the contributions of literary texts to political debates. Revealing the widespread and long-lived importance of these anti-royalist works supporting regional aristocratic rights to\u003cbr\u003efeud and revolt, \u003cem\u003eRebel Barons\u003c\/em\u003e reshapes our knowledge of reactions to changing political realities at a crux period in European history.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Oxford University Press, USA","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":47889964236951,"sku":"9780198788485","price":13017.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9780198788485.webp?v=1781178364","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/rebel-barons-resisting-royal-power-in-medieval-culture-9780198788485","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}