Berserk e a subversão do imaginário popular ocidental de aristocracia e cavalaria na Idade Média

Abstract

Throughout the Middle Ages, chivalry became an extremely influential institution, not only in the military sphere, but also in culture and in the definition of social classes in the medieval period. Even after its decline, with the invention of gunpowder and the war tactics of professional infantry that came to dominate the armies of the nobility, the values of this institution endured for centuries in the popular imagination of the West, thanks to the songs and books that told heroic stories of great knights. In the manga Berserk, by Kentaro Miura, set in a fantasy and dark medieval Europe, the protagonist of the work and his personality subvert in several ways the logic of the virtuous aristocratic nobleman full of moral principles perpetuated by medieval literature, revealing an extremely critical and nihilistic character of the work of Japanese writers.