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Craig Taylor, A Virtuous Knight: Defending Marshal Boucicaut (Jean II Le Meingre, 1366-1421) (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press in association with Boydell & Brewer, 2019). xiii + 203 pp.; 1 black-and-white plate. ISBN 978-1-90315398-8. £60.00.
Very few things can survive an attack by a python. When Terry Jones slung his lovely muck at Chaucer's Knight the reputation of the chivalric figure was as 'besmotered' as the pilgrim's jupon. Revival of reputation is the key theme of the Livre de fais (Book of Feats') of the French warlord maréchal Boucicaut. Professors Craig Taylor and Jane H. M. Taylor's excellent, accessible translation came out in 2016. Now Craig Taylor delves deeper. He clearly explains the genre of chivalric biography and convincingly argues the authorship of the Livre to have been a 'genuine collaboration': the brains supplied by Boucicaut's confessor Nicolas de Gonesse, the brawn by loyal knights and squires who shared in his adventures.
Perhaps Taylor's title should be 'the defence of' rather than 'defending'. For it is hard to...