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Parts of a suit of armor. |
Last class prompted me to make this post, which I am making as a resource for anyone who might have questions about arms and armor in Arthurian literature. It is sometimes difficult to visualize the characters in King Arthur because the stores were written across such a huge span of time, coupled with the tendency of medieval artists to depict characters in the fashions of their own time, resulting in depictions of characters supposedly alive in the fifth or sixth century wearing armor or clothing styles from hundreds of years later.
Between Geoffrey of Monmouth and Thomas Mallory, armor went from something like this
to something like this.
Additionally, during this period, shields have gone through the entire top row of this image, serving both as defensive barrier and a means of identification on the battlefield, with heraldry and colored patterns declaring both individual identity and affiliation, depending on the period and who is carrying it.
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