{"product_id":"the-hell-of-holy-war","title":"The Hell of Holy War","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Hell of Holy War \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003ereads Jean de Joinville's famous account of King Louis IX and his Seventh Crusade as a powerful and unique representation of war, memory, and loss during the Middle Ages.\u003c\/b\u003e In 1248, Joinville, a French nobleman, set out for the Holy Land, having taken the Cross and vowed to follow King Louis IX – Saint Louis (d. 1270) – across the Mediterranean. It would be more than six years before he returned home, having survived devastating military defeat; capture, imprisonment, and ransom; disease and perilous sea voyages. Later, Joinville wrote a riveting, first-person account of the king he admired, the war he survived, and the people he encountered.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUsually read as a hagiography of Saint Louis and a founding myth of the French nation, Joinville's memoir, Irit Kleiman argues, is also a raw, even brutal, meditation on what it means to go to war, survive combat and illness, witness the deaths of almost all of one's companions, then return home again. In a series of capacious, lyrical, and historically grounded close readings, \u003ci\u003eThe Hell of Holy War\u003c\/i\u003e reframes our understanding of Joinville's narrative as one that addresses the hubris of invasion, the friendship between men at arms, and the economic, ecological, and moral violence of war.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57504866861429,"sku":"9781501789588","price":43.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781501789588.jpg?v=1786953784","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/the-hell-of-holy-war","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}