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A study of the chief personalities and forces that brought Western Europe to pre-eminence as a centre for political experimentation, economic expansion, and intellectual discovery.
The first systematic study of the financing and management of parish church construction in England in the Middle Ages.
How did medieval builders manage to construct the towering cathedrals of Europe and other great civic buildings, not to mention the tens of thousands of parish churches? By combing through thousands of medieval illuminated manuscripts, early printed works, sculptures and carvings, Gunther Binding has assembled hundreds of drawings that clearly show the tools and techniques used by the masons and builders of the Middle Ages."
Recognising the importance of the Middle Ages as a vital point of reference in the construction of national identities, this challenging book examines the remarkable role played by the period in the grand duchy of Luxembourg. This country is representative of the close relationship between historicism and nation-building in modern Europe. Tracing the fortunes of four pivotal figures from their own lifetimes to the present, this book uncovers how they each entered collective memory and came to play a key role in a national narrative of history. The analysis includes the foundation myth of Sigefroid and Melusine, the posthumous career of Countess Ermesinde and King John of Bohemia’s transformation into a national hero. Borrowing some of its theoretical framework from the study of lieux de mémoire, this wide-ranging book crosses disciplinary boundaries and addresses not only historical writing, but also literature, the visual arts, and popular culture.
To what extent are the dead truly dead? In medieval society, corpses were assigned special functions and meanings in several different ways. They were still present in the daily life of the family of the deceased, and could even play active roles in the life of the community. Taking the materiality of death as a point of departure, this book comprehensively examines the conservation, burial and destruction of the corpse in its specific historical context. A complex and ambivalent treatment of the dead body emerges, one which necessarily confronts established modern perspectives on death. New scientific methods have enabled archaeologists to understand the remains of the dead as valuable source material. This book contextualizes the resulting insights for the first time in an interdisciplinary framework, considering their place in the broader picture drawn by the written sources of this period, ranging from canon law and hagiography to medieval literature and historiography. It soon becomes obvious that the dead body is more than a physical object, since its existence only becomes relevant in the cultural setting it is perceived in. In analogy to the findings for the living body in gender studies, the corpse too, can best be understood as constructed. Ultimately, the dead body is shaped by society, i.e. the living. This book examines the mechanisms by which this cultural construction of the body took place in medieval Europe. The result is a fascinating story that leads deep into medieval theories and social practices, into the discourses of the time and the daily life experiences during this epoch.
This volume provides a complex discussion of the variety of social efforts which were undertaken to create meaningful communities in the process of the formation of the early medieval gentes and kingdoms in the post-Roman west.
The construction of a church was undoubtedly one of the most demanding events to take place in the life of a medieval parish. It required a huge outlay of time, money and labour, and often a new organisational structure to oversee design and management. Who took control and who provided the financing was deeply shaped by local patterns in wealth, authority and institutional development - from small villages with little formal government to settlements with highly unequal populations. This all took place during a period of great economic and social change as communities managed the impact of the Black Death, the end of serfdom and the slump of the mid-fifteenth century. This original and authoritative study provides an account of how economic change, local politics and architecture combined in late-medieval England. It will be of interest to researchers of medieval, socio-economic and art history.
Liverpool’s contribution to the modern construction of the middle ages is here recognized for the first time. From the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, scholars from Merseyside have made pioneering advances in fields as diverse as Celtic philology and manuscript collecting, each in their own way contributing to our steadily deepening understanding of the real middle ages, and to the widening use to which images of the middle ages have been put. Merseyside presents in microcosm the different building blocks of the modern middle ages. In addition to its local focus, this book therefore also examines some of the most significant aspects of the modern study of the middle ages in the round. It offers fresh perspectives, from leading experts in their fields, on medieval Celtic languages, on English poetic literature, on heroes, on pageantry, on mystery plays, and on the effect of nationalist perspectives on the writing of medieval history. Tracing the burgeoning appreciation, in Merseyside and beyond, of the period in which the city was founded, this collection of essays is a fitting commemoration of Liverpool’s octocentenary.
Dangerous and difficult for both mother and child--what was the birth experience like in the Middle Ages? Dependent, in part, on social class, what pastimes did children enjoy? What games did they play? With often uncomfortable and even harsh living conditions, what kind of care did children receive in the home on a daily basis? These are just a few of the questions this work addresses about the day-to-day childhood experiences during the Middle Ages. Focusing on all social classes of children, the topics are wide-ranging. Chapters cover birth and baptism; early childhood; playing; clothing; care and discipline; formal education; university education; career training for peasants, craftsmen, merchants, clergy and nobility; and coming of age. In addition, three appendices are included. Appendix I provides information on the humoral theory of medicine. Appendix II offers examples of medieval math problems. Appendix III covers a unique episode in medieval history known as "The Children's Crusade." Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
This book interrogates our ideas about heterosexuality through examination of medieval romance narratives. Familiar configurations of romantic fiction such as male desire overwhelming feminine reluctance and the aloof masculine hero undone by love derive from this period. This book tests current theories of language and desire through stylistic analysis, examining transitivity choices and speech acts in sexual encounters and conversations in medieval romances. In the context of current preoccupations with gender and sexuality, and consent in rape cases, this study is of interest to scholars investigating language and sexuality as well as those researching and teaching medieval literature and culture.