E-Books →The Medieval Risk–Reward Society Courts, Adventure, and Love in the European Middle Ages

Free Download The Medieval Risk-Reward Society: Courts, Adventure, and Love in the European Middle Ages (Interventions: New Studies Medieval Culture) by Will Hasty
English | March 29, 2016 | ISBN: 0814213030, 0814252656 | True PDF | 312 pages | 2.5 MB
The Medieval Risk-Reward Society offers a study of adventure and love in the European Middle Ages focused on the poetry of authors such as Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Gottfried von Strassburg-showing how a society based on sacrifice becomes a society based on wagers and investments. Will Hasty's sociological approach to medieval courtly literature, informed by the analytic tools of game theory, reveals the blossoming of a worldview in which outcomes are uncertain, such that the very self (of a character or an authorial persona) is contingent on success or failure in possessing the things it desires-and upon which its social identity and personal happiness depend. Drawing on a diverse selection of contrasting canonical works ranging from the Iliad to the biblical book of Joshua to High Medieval German political texts to the writings of Leibniz and Mark Twain, Hasty enables an appreciation of the distinctive contributions made in antiquity and the Middle Ages to the medieval emergence of a European society based on risks and rewards.