From Chivalry to Terrorism

From chivalry to terrorism is an exploration of the conscious and unconscious ways in which European and American cultures have established an essential role for military and warrior virtue in defining masculinity. Beginning with the world of honor in the chivalric Middle Ages and ending in our age of global terrorism and limited war, Leo Braudy shows how perceptions and images of masculinity have changed in relation to major wars, advances in military technology, mutations in the idea of the state and how it wages war, and shifting attitudes toward both sexuality and citizenship. Braudy discusses both real and imagined characters such as Don Quixote, Henry V, Oliver Cromwell, Don Juan, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Custer, T.E. Lawrence, Osama bin Laden, and the heroes of Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway. Countering the sociobiological emphasis on the fixity of human nature, this book stresses human changeability and responsiveness to circumstances.