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After many years at the margins of historical investigation, the late medieval English gentry are widely regarded as an important and worthy subject for academic research. This book aims to explore the culture of the wide range of people whom we might include within the late medieval gentry, taking in all of landed society below the peerage, from knights down to gentlemen, and including those aspirants to gentility who might under traditional socio-economic terms be excluded from the group. It begins by exploring the origins of, and influences on, the culture of the late medieval gentry, thus contributing to the ongoing debate on defining the membership of this group. The book considers the gentry's emergence as a group distinct from the nobility, and looks at the various available routes to gentility. Through surveys of the gentry's military background, administrative and political roles, social behaviour, and education, it seeks to provide an overview of how the group's culture evolved, and how it was disseminated. The book offers a broad view of late medieval gentry culture, which explores, reassesses and indeed sometimes even challenges the idea that members of the gentry cultivated their own distinctive cultural identity. The evolution of the gentleman as a peer-assessed phenomenon, gentlemanly behaviour within the chivalric tradition, the education received by gentle children, and the surviving gentry correspondence are also discussed. Although the Church had an ambivalent attitude toward artistic expression, much of the gentry's involvement with the visual arts was religious in focus.
Mindful of the need to avoid generalisations, and to approach the available evidence cautiously, this chapter draws on the surviving letter collections of the late medieval English gentry in an attempt to gain insight into the writers’ literacy. Of all the late medieval social groups, evidence of the reading and writing skills of the gentry is the most accessible. Even if they possessed literacy skills
into a model of gentle conduct which could only appeal to the late medieval English gentry. Tracts of practical use The importance of miscellanies containing practical advice for the gentleman has received attention in post-1980s studies, with particular emphasis on the shaping of socio-political and cultural identity. 38 George Keiser points to the
After many years at the margins of historical investigation, the late medieval English gentry are now widely regarded as an important and worthy subject for academic research. A wealth of publications since the mid-1980s testifies to the appeal of this group to researchers within a range of disciplines, and new approaches are casting further light on the fundamental roles played