This conference centered around the question of how chivalry as an ideal could have exerted such influence on literature and the arts, long after it had disappeared as a social reality. All sessions were held at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

Sponsored by the Renaissance Seminar of the University of Chicago and the Renaissance Society of America, with support from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Loyola University Chicago School of Law, and organized by Larry Silver, Northwestern University.

Thursday, March 29

Welcome
Richard H. Brown, The Newberry Library

Session 1

Chair: Larry Silver, Northwestern University (now at University of Pennsylvania)

Chivalry: Ideal and Real in the Narrative Poetry of Froissart
Peter Dembowski, University of Chicago

Politics and Chivalry: Christine de Pizan’s Epistre Othea
Sandra Hindman, Johns Hopkins University (now professor emerita, Northwestern University)

The Art of the Order of the Golden Fleece: A Study in Chivalric Elitism
Jeffrey Smith, University of Texas at Austin

Tour of the Harding Collection of Arms and Armor, Art Institute of Chicago

Friday, March  30

Session 2

Investiture and Divestiture: Some Knightly Images in Italian Art
Paul Watson, University of Pennsylvania

Comic and Satiric Aspects of Chivalry in Some Late Medieval Texts
Gerhild Scholz-Williams, Washington University in Saint Louis

The Chivalric Iconography of the Housebook Master
Keith P. F. Moxey, University of Virginia (now at Columbia University)

Der Theuerdank of Maximilian I: The Last Romance of the Last Knight
Elaine Tennant, University of California, Berkeley

Session 3

The Horses of Hippolytus: Chivalry and Folly in the Orlando Furioso
Albert Ascoli, Northwestern University (now at University of California, Berkeley)

The End of Chivalry in the French Chanson
Howard Mayer Brown, University of Chicago

Jacques Amyot and the Humanistic Polemics against Chivalric Romance
Marc Fumaroli, Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV)

General Discussion

Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture, sponsored by The Renaissance Society of America

Introduction: Eugene F. Rice, Jr., Columbia University

The Astrological Cosmos and Rhetorical Culture of Giovanni Gioviano Pontano
Charles Trinkaus, University of Michigan (now emeritus)

Saturday, March 31

Session 4: Current Trends in Renaissance Studies

Chair: David Rosand, Columbia University

History of Law and Political Theory
Julius Kirshner, University of Chicago (now emeritus)

History of Medicine
Nancy Siraisi, Hunter College, CUNY (now emerita)

French Literature
Lance K. Donaldson-Evans, University of Pennsylvania

Learn more about Center for Renaissance Studies programs.