"The idea of chivalry is one that has fascinated readers, poets and historians for over 200 years, since the first attempts in the mid-eighteenth century to give a critical account of it. In the nineteenth century the imagery of chivalry played a large part in the Romantic literature: Thomas Arnold thought it a pernicious influence; Tennyson turned the knights into Victorian gentlemen; and Malory became a household name. The increasing interest today in things medieval, whether they be music, art or literature, naturally includes chivalry, one of the most original concepts of the medieval mind. The Reign of Chivalry presents a broad picture of the chivalric world, and shows how chivalry affected by great social movements, great writers and great events, and analyses the legacy it passed down to later ages."