Beyond valor and bloodshed: the arts of war as a path to serenity / Karl F. Friday -- Table and bed: on the refinement of culture at the medieval court / Horst Wenzel -- Of swords and plowshares: dislocation and transformations in Chrétien's Grail story / Matilda T. Bruckner -- The martial arts and the loss of decorum in some medieval French narratives: Chrétien's Perceval, The Prose Lancelot, and Jehan de Saintré / Douglas Kelly -- Heroes and superheroes: the heroic in the Bourgeois Age / Alfred Ebenbauer -- From sword to dress: the ideal knight in late medieval French romance / Michelle Szkilnik -- Santō Kyōden's Chōshin suikoden: representations of violence and honor in Tokugawa fiction / Stephen J. Roddy -- Husbands and wives in Japanese feudalism / Reinhard Zöllner -- Fighting for land - fighting for power: war aim making in Renaissance Europe / Harald Kleinschmidt -- Li Shimin and the representation of military leadership in medieval China / David A. Graff -- Military evolution or revolution?: state formation and the early modern samurai / Shinko Taniguchi.