War is a powerful and enduring literary topos. Literature of different types, in different periods, and in different countries, engages with the practice of war, and reflects too the cultural attitudes of the period to war. The idea and practice of war is central to some of the most dominant subject matters in the medieval period - as well as to chivalry, to religion, to ideas of nationhood, to concepts of gender, the body and the psyche. War is a repeated theme in both secular and religious literary genres of the Middle Ages - though it is not necessarily celebrated. Essays in this collection begin with a consideration of ideal military practice and the reception of Vegetius (Christopher Allmand); this finds an interesting contrast in Christine de Pisan's treatise on warfare (Françoise le Saux). The collection then turns to chronicling war, particularly in France (Marianne Ailes, Georges le Brusque), Germany (Harry Jackson) and Scotland (Thea Summerfield). These essays are complemented by a series of essays on the fictions of war, as presented in English Arthurian narratives (Andrew Lynch), Chaucer (Simon Meecham-Jones), Malory (Kevin Whetter), and pastoral poetry (Helen Cooper), and by a consideration of attitudes to women in warfare (Corinne Saunders).