ABSTRACT
This essay discusses an early sixteenth-century poem that shows the uncomfortable process involved in refashioning a noble identity for new times consciously putting off old tropes of aristocratic masculinity and putting on new ones. The manuscript itself is an object which expresses a powerful sense of aristocratic identity. Evidence from the later medieval period suggests that private devotions were seen as a fundamental part of the education of young male aristocrats. Political literature of the medieval period places a particular onus on aristocratic men to display a capacity for virtue on the grounds that virtue justifies their elite status as rulers and governors in different kinds of polities. The medieval aristocratic lifestyle was distinguished by opportunities for leisure, including the rituals of dining, music, literature, discussion, and hunting and hawking.
