ABSTRACT
The phrase 'arrayed in form of war' is frequently found in late medieval English official and legal documents to introduce descriptions of the 'array' — the armour, weapons and organisation - of certain bands of male individuals. War itself is a highly variable and historically contingent business. Monique Scheer's study demonstrates that participation in written culture structures and informs the performance of emotional repertoires, but always within particular historical contexts. Religious reference is a common emotional and rhetorical vocabulary within modern war memorialisation, crossing and complicating a simultaneous view of war as human disaster, and providing another powerful example of the unstable semiotics of much war writing. In medieval European literature, war was a central theme, closely linked with genres such as romance and epic. Articulations of suffering in war literature have a distressingly marked longevity. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
