| Title | : | The Last Knight: The Twilight of the Middle Ages and the Birth of the Modern Era |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0060754036 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780060754037 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 260 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2004 |
The Last Knight: The Twilight of the Middle Ages and the Birth of the Modern Era Reviews
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Norman Cantor - 1929 - 2004 - This image is from Columbia University
Cantor is an irascible academic who flourishes in the field of the Middle Ages. He takes as his focus one John Gaunt, a high-born aristocrat who also embodies the values of the time. Using Gaunt, Cantor provides us with a wide ranging look at the times in Europe as changes flowed through the world with varying degrees of resistance. There is so much information in here that it can make one's head ache. I wished sometimes that he had focused even more finely on fewer themes. His style is very accessible, if plenty acerbic when describing things earn his disapproval. I would not like to be a student who handed in a late assignment in this guy’s class. But the book is entertaining and very, very interesting, enjoyable and informative. Heartily recommended for the intellectually curious. -
I read two chapters and put it down in disgust. Refers to people who are not heterosexual as 'gays' constantly, overstates 'facts' that cannot actually be proven (protip: if William Rufus, Richard II and Edward II were attracted to men, we will still never know for sure, and their eras concepts of sexuality were wholly different to ours), and has some kind of obsession with seeing John of Gaunt as a modern-day billionaire.
I'll have to look for a different biography of John of Gaunt. This one simply doesn't impress me as being trustworthy. -
Almost too many flaws to itemize, including: (A) Shallow research -- or at least a compendium of superficialities about the Middle Ages, (B) Far too much repetition, (C) Little focus on the presumptive central character (John of Gaunt), (D) Made-up (and shockingly bad) "personal statements", (E) Ridiculous conclusions, (F) Simplistic writing (aimed at middle schoolers?,) and (G) a weird obsession with "billionaire capitalists" (a phrase that comes up so often I lost count.) Cantor has the academic chops, so this was obviously a quick knockoff to fatten his CV by one more book. Not worth the time.
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I must've read a different book than others because, while it is certainly not without flaws, it is a good read about an important historical figure. Full review to come.
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Rating: 3.5 Stars
While this book is not without its flaws, I feel like other readers and I must have read a completely different book. I found it to be a good read about a highly important historical figure who sometimes is forgotten - though I am not sure how. it so happened that a publisher had offered me a copy of another book about John of Gaunt so I read them around the same time and recommend both, as each has kind of a different focus. While they are both at the core biographies of John of Gaunt, the subtitle is important for this one. it is much more about the time period and the great changes taking place, as it is about the Duke of Lancaster.
Norman Cantor is still a well-known medieval author, despite him having passed away in 2004. I enjoy his works, have read some and have many more on my to-read list. So, I know that he has the knowledge necessary to write about his topics. Even well-versed authors are not completely immune to suppositions, and there were quite a few, but I couldn't not keep reading the book. One reason for all those suppositions is that, despite the fact that we have pages and pages, roughly 500 or so, of Gaunt's business letters and documents,there is not one single personal letter of his that has survived to come down to us through the centuries. The author also makes the point on page 81 that, "There is no evidence from late medieval England that aristocrats wrote personal letters at that time." It doesn't mean they didn't, it just means that so far none have been found. Such a shame that if they did so, we will never have these personal letters to read, to better understand the people we admire or disdain from afar (Believe me - what I would not give for an authentic cache of letters to be discovered somewhere in England or Aquitaine penned by Eleanor herself, detailing events in her life that took her from Louis' side as Queen Consort of France to Henry's side as Queen Consort of England!)
FYI: I am almost embarrassed to admit this, and maybe it is just because my head is so full of Henrys and Edwards and such, that I can't keep all the family trees straight (especially when they overlap multiple times), but I don't know how it never occurred to me before that Prince Henry the Navigator was Gaunt's grandson. I don't know why it took so long for me to make the connection. Yikes.
The book is not organized in a way that some readers might enjoy. Instead of being a straight biography of John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, his life story is told by topic. So, yes the book jumps around in time quite a bit, but you also have to keep in mind that subtitle I mentioned. It is about Lancaster, but also about the world he grew up in and the changes that took place to begin ushering in the modern world. Topics include the broad 'Old Europe', then the great families of the age, women, warriors, peasants, politics, and eve a whole chapter revolving around Chaucer. I liked the organization, because one chapter you get a sense of general life in that time, as well as how Lancaster fit into the world and how the various topics impacted him, and he them. That background information is especially important for those who have little knowledge to begin with, while still focusing on the subject of the book.
As I said before, the book is not without its flaws. There is a lot of supposition throughout. It is his final book published before his death (both occurred in 2004; a book about Alexander the Great was published posthumously in 2005) and I still found it to be adequate. I don't know that I would call it his best book, but Cantor had the ability to make even uninteresting aspects of the Middle Ages engaging. There is one quote though that I had a good chuckle at, not because it was ha-ha funny, but because it was just kind of a silly statement: "Undoubtedly Gaunt would have loved to wear the crown. But that was outside the realm of possibility. Above all Gaunt was a Plantagenet who wanted to maintain the dignity of the bloodlines of his family" (page 197). I mean, I seriously almost snorted at that line. While it is likely true that the Duke of Lancaster secretly coveted the throne of England (and really, he was already the richest man in the country and wielded about the same control), he would never have really overthrown his nephew Richard II, son of his elder brother, Edward the Black Prince. In all honesty he probably should have, because Richard II was not the greatest of kings, but that part might be true. The second part is what had me chortling, the 'dignity' of the Plantagenets. Just look at what Eleanor and Henry II's sons did in the many years their father was on the throne! They rebelled against him how many times (twice - guided by Eleanor herself) in order to get more power. Richard practically hounded his father to death for the crown after Henry the Young King (older brother) and Geoffrey (younger brother) both died, and John was easily one of the worst kings in the history of England.
Even with that quote, I can still say that I would recommend this volume. Cantor has written numerous texts about the Middle Ages and knows what he is talking about. It is fairly short, the hardcover volume I discovered at half-Price Books is only 241 pages. Give it a go and see what you think! -
Good heavens, this book seriously needs an EDITOR! The first three chapters are nearly unreadable, the writing is so poor. From Chapter 4 on, the author seems finally to be interested in his own topic, and things flow a little more smoothly, but still, I was constantly distracted by the author's personal asides and political commentary. I understand his intent in so many asides and digressions, but they, too, are rather poorly executed and just made me roll my eyes, even when I agreed with him.
This book just isn't what I expected it to be; the content is there, but it's just too painful to slog through his disorganized, meandering mush.
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One outstanding WTH moment: "Cultivate in this short life what God has given you, and appreciate the divine message communicated through music and the visual arts--that, along with food, sex, and defecation" (page 159).
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This is a short book and a quick read. Quick as in some of the paragraphs are two sentences long and Cantor makes sure that he's always making a point, even if he's already made the point, or even if the point isn't really supported by evidence. That's not always so bad, as at least Cantor is clear about why he wrote this book: more people should know about John of Gaunt, and one reason is to understand that wealthy elites haven't changed much, however much society seems to have changed. Gaunt was somewhat progressive on sexual issues, supportive of the arts, lavish in his lifestyle, and yet he felt quite bound by a code of honor. He was neither religious nor antireligious, though he showed some interest in religious reform movements, so long as they did not interfere with his income and influence.
There are also some fine nuggets in this book about medieval English life and the cultural transitions of the 14th century. There isn't much at all comparing the real John of Gaunt with Shakespeare's representation of him. And however often Cantor compares Gaunt to "the billionaires of today," I can't help but think that it's somewhat relevant for Gaunt to be the son of a king and the uncle of another, which is not true of contemporary financial elites. Gaunt also did different things with his money than they did, even if his personal behavior was quite similar to theirs. So the analogy gets more facile with each repetition, and there are quite a few repetitions.
I should also say that I was very disappointed in Cantor's book "Antiquity," but I read both that and this because I greatly enjoyed Cantor's "Civilization in the Middle Ages" and "Inventing the Middle Ages," even if both of those books are flawed. Cantor knows what many historians don't: facts are not necessarily interesting in of themselves, and arguments among historians are often NOT interesting unless one is directly involved, and readers like for historians to make connections between events, and it's not against the law to even make a judgment about a historical personality. It's even nice to admit that a historical figure HAD a personality.
So this book wasn't very good. But it wasn't like getting a root canal, either. -
I picked up The Last Knight by Norman F. Cantor at some vintage store I’m sure, a good while ago, and thought it made a nice coffee table book at my last place. I only got around to reading it lately, but as an amateur Medieval history fan, I was pretty excited!
And boy was I let down!
The Last Knight covers John of Gaunt, a wealthy nobleman and influential prince. Well, it claims to. It does mention him a lot, but it’s far from a biography, which is what you would assume from the title anyway.
No, it actually covers a very broad range of time, from the mid 1000s to the mid 1500s. Okay…
It doesn’t go in chronological order. Nothing of the sort. Instead it sorts by topic, with chapters like “Church”, “Romance”, “War”, etc. This wouldn’t be so bad if every chapter didn’t re-introduce everything the last chapters covered. Apparently these were all written as separate essays, and boy, you can believe it!
Norman Cantor used to be a best-selling, but controversial author. This is his last book, and he died around the same time it was published, at 75 years of age. I think his publisher just really wanted to squeeze one last payday out of him, which is a shame – I’ve never read any of his past work, but I assume he was pretty decent, but this book stains whatever legacy he would’ve had, and certainly puts me off of reading anything else by him.
I didn't even finish. I tried, let me tell you. I really worked on this book. It was a struggle. There were typos. There were things that were blatantly, factually incorrect. And Cantor sure liked to guess and assume and make stuff up. His political views were incredibly clear, and it seemed like he was using John of Gaunt and the time period as allegories for his rants on the wealthy today. He also liked to make up fake letters and dialogue.
It was all a load of crap, really.
I hate giving up on books, but it got to the point where I was two-thirds in and I realized I was just wasting my time here. So I went to the last chapter, just to see if it was a nice summary, and instead found that by that time he had went full-on political rant.
Yikes.
I can’t believe I spent as much time I did on this thing. Please, don’t buy this book. Don’t do it to yourself. This book was dismal. -
This is a weird book.
In theory, it's an overview of the end of the Middle Ages in England as told through the life of John of Gaunt, which sounds like a pretty big book, right? Except this one is less than three hundred pages, so it doesn't do either overview or biography really well, especially since it can't seem to decide which one it wants to be.
I did enjoy the thematic treatment of the Middle Ages through Gaunt's life. We get looks at the military, political government, the life of ordinary folk (constantly referred to as "peasants"), women, religion, chivalry, etc. The book is also written in a very accessible writing style. However, Cantor constantly refers to people as "homosexuals," which gave a really unfortunate "man saying females" vibe, and in one confusing instance he described Richard I as staunchly heterosexual (lol) and entirely homosexual (more likely) in the same paragraph (I think the word you want is bisexual, sir, although none of them are really accurate).
There were also a bunch of inaccuracies, some of them glaring. At one point he refers to Margaret Beaufort as Gaunt's daughter, which... no, he was her great-grandfather. Plus Cantor's grasp of modern history is... shaky, at best, and he has a weird obsession with moden-day billionaires, at one point connecting Gaunt and Bill Gates (??). I finished this book with decidedly mixed feelings, and I would not recommend it. There's other biographies of Gaunt and overviews of the Middle Ages without the sketchy "homosexuals" vibe and factual errors. -
By delving into the life of John of Gaunt, Cantor explores the end of the Middle Ages. It read like an overview of the people of that time--their lifestyle, politics, religion, wars, and attitudes. I enjoyed reading this book and having a different view John of Gaunt.
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Perhaps the worst history I have read, Cantor is uncritical, colloquial, impertinent, and tedious. I was surprised that he has a Ph. D in History, as he writes like an amateur.
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This book is NOT a biography of John of Gaunt. If that's what you are looking for don't even pick this book up. This book is more a brief overview of England from the time shortly before William the Conqueror to the reign of Henry IV and beyond. I gave this 2 stars instead of 1 solely because there are a few bits of information about John of Gaunt I found interesting, although judging by the rest of the book I'm not sure how true they are.
I don't even know where to begin with the things wrong with this book, besides the fact that 80% of it is not about "The Last Knight". Let me start with the apparent lack of editor. While I was annoyed by so much before this, the first thing that really made me extremely frustrated came in the last paragraph of page 122. The paragraph starts "The marriage of Phillipa and João of Portugal founded an important dynasty. One of their sons, Prince Henrique, organized expeditions down the west coast of Africa to find gold and bring back black slaves." Cantor makes much of this "inherent racism" later. While I find the slave trade itself to be abhorrent, I am able to understand it in the context of the time, even though the author doesn't seem to be able to. Besides the fact that slave trade is has absolutely nothing to do with John of Gaunt as he was dead at this time, I then turned to page 123 and read a paragraph and then the next starts with "A second legacy-for good and bad-was his Portuguese grandson Prince Henry, born from the union of the king of Portugal and Gaunt's daughter Phillipa...They founded the black slave trade." Literally one paragraph in between & the same sentence is paraphrased. This perfectly describes my question where was the editor?
Cantor frequently jumps around in time ranging from 800 to the 1300s. It isn’t realistic to compare the England, or even Europe, in 800 to the England of 1300, yet he does this frequently. He spends most of the book describing what he thinks living was like in this age and the few times he has a source to back him up he uses a 3-5 page quote from it. He does not follow this up by stating his own opinions, he lets the original author's established fiction solidify his "facts". While he does explain that literature in this time was evolving, he makes sure to point out the main source, Chaucer, was financed by Gaunt. Most historians note this as Gaunt's mistress and later third wife was Chaucer's sister in law, but Cantor takes it to a different level suggesting that Phillipa and Katherine lived in an unsubstantiated "ménage à trois" relationship. He goes as far as saying one for Phillipa and Chaucer’s children was really Gaunt’s, another completely unsubstantiated claim that I have yet to see in any other material from this time.
Cantor also makes many rash generalizations. There are too many to point to all specifically, but one especially maddening is his sating as a fact that both Edward II and Richard II were deposed and murdered because they were gay. I fully understand that this book is 15 years old as it has sat unread on my bookshelf for at least 13 of those years, but his emphasis on, as he calls it homoeroticism is not necessary. He fails to use it in context of the time and his emphasis on it is unlike anything I've seen in any other books of this period, and I've read a lot of them.
In short, this book would certainly not be a suitable cited source for any academic work and would not be good reading for anyone who wants to learn about Gaunt or this time period. -
When we think of knights, we often think of shining armor, King Arthur and his fabulous court, fair maidens, and of course chivalry. These are considered to be literary ideals, almost too fantastic to be real. However, knights did live in the Middle Ages into the 14th century where some of the greatest knights lived. One is known as The Black Prince; the other was John of Gaunt. Both were brothers, sons of Edward III, the one who helped launch the Hundred Years’ War with France. The Black Prince might have a pretty cool nickname, but the one who really stole the show was John of Gaunt. The subject of Norman F. Cantor’s book “The Last Knight: The Twilight of the Middle Ages and the Birth of the Modern Era” is none other than the third son of Edward III, John of Gaunt.
Now I know what you are thinking, why do a book review for about someone who lived in the 1300s when this blog is focused on the Wars of the Roses and the Tudors. The answer is simple. It is because John of Gaunt and his children with his third wife and mistress Catherine Swynford would create the Beaufort line, the same family of Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry Tudor, the founder of the Tudor Dynasty. It was also with John’s first wife Blanche of Lancaster, that the line of Lancaster was formed. He may have only been a third son but he became one of the wealthiest men in Europe and his family would shape the future of England forever.
Cantor, in this book, explores the world that John of Gaunt called home. What was it like in not just in England but in all of the medieval world? What about religion and literature? What was life like for women and knights in court? All of these aspects are explored throughout this book as well as elements in John of Gaunt’s life that made him unique, including his wealth and becoming King of Castile after he married his second wife Constance. Through wars and plagues, politics and rebellions, exploration and the beginning of the Renaissance, John of Gaunt navigated through it all.
It sounds like a very complex time, however, Cantor has a way of explaining it all in such a way that is both engaging and educational. Cantor through his writing style makes it easy to understand John of Gaunt’s legacy, not only is his time but how his legacy affected even our time. It was through his patronage that men like Chaucer and John Wyclif were able to complete their best works.
Shakespeare gave John of Gaunt a very patriotic speech, “this sceptre’d isle…This other Eden, demi-paradise”. Shakespeare was speaking as though John of Gaunt was an old man, reminiscing about the good times as the younger generation was taking over like Henry Bolingbroke and Henry the Navigator. Cantor brings to life the legend of John of Gaunt. Towards the end of his book, Cantor nicely sums up John of Gaunt’s life:
Above all, Gaunt’s taste for war, his frenetic energy, and his physical strength, as well as his love of women and his wealth and lifestyle, set the model for European aristocratic behavior, which went unchallenged until the nineteenth century and is still the pattern for all effective and durable social elites. (Cantor, 239).
John of Gaunt was a Renaissance man of his times. He wasn’t just some old man of Shakespearean lore. Cantor makes John of Gaunt and his world of the Middle Ages come alive. If you want to learn more about John of Gaunt, his family, and his world, Norman F. Cantor’s book “The Last Knight” is the book for you. -
From this book's cover I assumed that this was primarily a biography of John of Gaunt. However, the book's subtitle gives a better indication of the author's focus: the waning years of the middle ages (in which John of Gaunt was a major player). Rather than tell about John's life in chronological order, the author breaks down the society of the late middle ages into a number of categories which he discusses, using John of Gaunt as an occasional illustration (with increasing frequency as the book progresses). The style was a bit wandering and very uneven (swinging back and forth between almost insulting oversimplification and "intellectual" jargon) with quite a few redundancies and some digressive jabs at modern billionaires. There was some interesting information in the book, but the overall presentation was definitely lacking.
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First the good: The typographer of this book really knocked it out of the park. He/she is the only reason I didn't rate this book with one star.
Now the rest: This book reads like it was dictated and transcribed, then clumsily edited. There are tangents and repetitions, huge leaps of logic, and statements of fact that are actually conjecture. The words suggest, imply, and seem should have been used throughout the text...but they weren't. I had purchased this book as background research for a project. While the author brings up some interesting new ways to think about the life of Gaunt, I can't trust the information contained in it due to these weaknesses. Too many assertions conflict with more trustworthy sources I have already read. -
Cantor's book is very accessible. His biography places John of Gaunt within the context of the times in which he lived, and the role he played in society. The book therefore presents both a portrait of John of Gaunt but also of England in the transition to the post-medieval world. Well worth reading.
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Just finished Katherine - and wanted to reread this again. John of Gaunt is one of my most favorite historical characters...this place him within the customs, institutions, economical, religious context of his times with chapters on politics, the church, women, peasants, warfare, Chaucer, etc.
I enjoyed it just as much the second time around. -
I thought this was a biography of John of Gaunt. It was not. It was what the subtitle says a study on the passing one era and the beginning of another. Cantor used John of Gaunt as an example of one who had his feet firmly planted in the Middle Ages but had impulses of modernism (which he mostly sublimated). I did enjoy it, but I wouldn't consider it a great book - good, but not great.
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This book is interesting for a number of reasons. First, Norman Cantor is a legitimately good historian of the Middle Ages. He has written books ranging from special interest to textbooks to historiography, and all are well researched and well written. The framework for this book is interesting, however, for not only the information it conveys, but the subject matter itself. Cantor presents us with the life of John of Gaunt. It is an interesting choice. Following Gaunt allows us to view the major events of his time – the Hundred Years’ War, the Wyclif challenge to religious authority that foreshadowed the Protestant movement, the emergence of the English language as a literary form through the figure of Geoffrey Chaucer, and the insistence of the Lancastrian branch of the Plantagenet family towards power culminating in John’s descendents taking the thrown to the future detriment of the institution of monarch in England.
Cantor presents John of Gaunt as typical of the Middle Ages. It is true that he represents much of the culture of the aristocracy of the time. However, the allegory today would be to describe the early 21st century through the life of Bill Gates. It is true that much could be drawn from such a study, but John of Gaunt was truly exceptional in his wealth and power, that to infer much about the end of the Middle Ages and the birth of the modern world probably stretches the argument a little too far.
What can be said without question is that John of Gaunt was an interesting character in the history of the world, and he deserves study. The book assumes the reader knows nothing of these times. With that in mind, Cantor begins by describing the Europe into which John of Gaunt arrives. It is a world dominated by the Hundred Years’ War and rigid aristocratic principles. -
As there is so little personal information about John of Gaunt (diaries and personal letters etc) who lived some 700 years ago, this account of what kind of man he was is explained through the historical era in which he lived. One learns about the Middle Ages through the exploration and explanation of the era. Chapter titles give the clue. Old Europe, The Great Families, Plantagenet England, Women, Warriors, Spain, The Church, Peasants, Politics, Chaucer and The End of the Middle Ages.
It was an interesting read. John of Gaunt was enormously wealthy, worth billions in today's money and highly influential. He was the son of a king of England, uncle to another, grandfather of Spain's Henry the Navigator, and patron of Geoffrey Chaucer. He was a walking contradiction: compassionate and chivalric toward women of his class, but completely lacking empathy for peasants. He was a worrier who loved to joust and hunt, but was a failure when it came to his war campaigns. He loved his family and his first wife but had many affairs and ended up marrying his mistress, a common woman, after the death of his second wife, legitimizing the four children she bore him, a scandal that didn't faze him one bit.
For anyone interesting in learning a little bit about the "romanticized" era of Chivalry and courtly love, this little volume brings the reality down to earth. -
The text is very easy to read and informative enough to keep me - a novice in history - interested. I've never taken history classes after high school and haven't really picked up history books before. However, I am keen to learn and this is a good enough introduction to historical texts. I have qualms with the ending, though, and the unnecessary commentaries on the Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks. I wish he just remained in discussing medieval history rather than inadequately connecting it with modern history - especially since his understanding of the Bolsheviks is simplistic at best.
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A slim book with not that much about its subject, John of Gaunt. The book is further flawed by the author’s inclusion of completely fictional material such as a letter from J of G to Catherine Swynford and a four page statement on slavery from Henry the Navigator. (Okay, these “documents” are based on Norman Cantor’s understanding of these characters, but even for a popularization such as this book, the author should not stoop to such stunts.)
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Fascinating historical figure, John of Gaunt, and time, 14th c., but it is marred by the lack of editing and an, at times, cringy writing style. This is the second of Cantor's books I have read this year, the first being In The Wake of The Plague, and the last. Two stars for some interesting history but I feel I'm being generous.
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It's a brief history of the time period as told through the life of John of Gaunt. I was hoping for more of a review of his life, but it focuses more on society as a whole (though that aspect is definitely briefer than I hoped as well). It's just a bit too much of an overview for me but could be good for other people.
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I would enjoy a biography of John of Gaunt, but found the use of his life as a lens through which to survey his historical period forced and unsatisfactory. I kept wanting more depth on one or the other.
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Certainly not the sort of book that you read through quickly. No real coherent story being told, but somehow manages to remain interesting enough to keep reading. Helped fill in a gap in my knowledge of European (particularly English) history.
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Spiralling narrative that shifts gears without warning, and the book itself is barely about what the title and introduction suggest. Short, but a bit of a slog.
