Chivalry certainly has a tarnished reputation these days. Dubbed everything from anachronistic to reactionary, sexist to aristocratic, conservative to even exclusively Christian, its traditional virtues languish disregarded. Luckily, Fabrice Midal is here to take up the lance and lead the charge in the name of one of humanity’s oldest sets of ideals. The figure of the knight errant, Midal asserts, incarnates the transcendence of the petty self, embodying a spirituality based on excellence.

Tracing chivalry back to its Celtic and even Greek roots, the author distinguishes the role of tradition from that of conservatism in society, showing chivalric ideas at work in both Celt folktales and The Iliad. He moves from the golden age of knighthood, with its itinerant troubadours, the invention of courtly love, and the spread of Arthurian legend, to how the essentially neutral chivalrous precepts are co-opted by other, often religious ideologies and value systems. He then devotes the second half of the book in a topical assessment of chivalry’s applications to contemporary issues: globalization, capitalism, alienation, the uprooting of societies, the acceleration of technological change, and the struggle for democracy. Examining the lives and deeds of inspirational figures, he concludes that spiritual grandeur lies in taking up the gauntlet and confronting our challenges, thus orienting our lives toward the pursuit of an ideal.