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Illuminated History Books in the Anglo-Norman World examines surviving medieval manuscripts from 1066 to 1272 and the people and processes involved in their creation. It addresses the reception and circulation of histories, and the different ways in which imagery and text could be used to create nuanced accounts of the past.
A study of the representation of education in material culture, at a period of considerable change and growth.
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The book of Psalms was at the core of devotional practice in western Christianity throughout the Middle Ages. The study of medieval Latin Psalters provides evidence for the owners, users, and makers of each of these unique books. This volume examines Psalter manuscripts as objects, exploring how they were designed and the changes that have been made to them over time. The choices made about text, decoration, size, and layout in these manuscripts reveal a diverse range of engagements with the Psalms, as they were sung, read, and scrutinized. The book thus sheds new light on some of the treasures of Trinity College Dublin and the Chester Beatty Library. *** Slim in format and heavy in insights...
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, texts about the recent and more distant past were produced in remarkable numbers in the lands controlled by the kings of England. This may be seen, in part, as a response to changing social and political circumstances in the wake of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The names of many of the twelfth and thirteenth-century historians are well known, and they include Orderic Vitalis, William of Malmesbury, John of Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon, Gerald of Wales, and Matthew Paris. Yet the manuscripts in which these works survive are also evidence for the involvement of many other people in the production of history, as patrons, scribes, and art...
@Calling Dr Laura tells the story of what happens to you when you are raised in a family of secrets, and what happens to your brain (and heart) when you learn the truth from an unlikely source [iteur].
This book argues that abbatial authority was fundamental to monastic historical writing in the period c.500-1500. Writing history was a collaborative enterprise integral to the life and identity of medieval monastic communities, but it was not an activity for which time and resources were set aside routinely. Each act of historiographical production constituted an extraordinary event, one for which singular provision had to be made, workers and materials assigned, time carved out from the monastic routine, and licence granted. This allocation of human and material resources was the responsibility and prerogative of the monastic superior. Drawing on a wide and diverse range of primary evidenc...
Contemporary descriptions of objects no longer extant examined to reconstruct these lost treasures.Surviving accounts of the material culture of medieval Europe - including buildings, boats, reliquaries, wall paintings, textiles, ivory mirror cases, book bindings and much more - present a tantalising glimpse of medieval life, hinting at the material richness of that era. However, students and scholars of the period will be all too familiar with the frustration of trying to piece together a picture of the past from a handful of fragments. The "material turn" has put art, architecture, and other artefacts at the forefront of historical and cultural studies, and the resulting spotlight on the m...
Challenging the standard view that England emerged as a dominant power and Wales faded into obscurity after Edward I's conquest in 1282, this book considers how Welsh (and British) history became an enduringly potent instrument of political power in the late Middle Ages. Brought into the broader stream of political consciousness by major baronial families from the March (the borderlands between England and Wales), this inventive history generated a new brand of literature interested in succession, land rights, and the origins of imperial power, as imagined by Geoffrey of Monmouth. These marcher families leveraged their ancestral, political, and ideological ties to Wales in order to strengthen their political power, both regionally and nationally, through the patronage of historical and genealogical texts that reimagined the Welsh past on their terms. In doing so, they brought ideas of Welsh history to a wider audience than previously recognized and came to have a profound effect on late medieval thought about empire, monarchy, and succession.
Introducing the Medieval Ass presents a lucid, accessible, and comprehensive picture of the ass’s enormous socio-economic and cultural significance in the Middle Ages and beyond. In the Middle Ages, the ass became synonymous with human idiocy, a comic figure representing foolish peasants, students too dull to learn, and their asinine teachers. This trope of foolishness was so prevalent that by the eighteenth century the word ‘ass’ had been replaced by ‘donkey’. Economically, the medieval ass was a vital, utilitarian beast of burden, rather like today’s ubiquitous white van; culturally, however, the medieval ass enjoyed a rich, paradoxical reputation. Its hard work was praised, but its obstinacy condemned. It exemplified the good Christian, humbly bearing Christ to Jerusalem, but also represented Sloth, a mortal sin. Its potent sexual reputation – one literary ass had sex with a woman – was simultaneously linked to sterility and, to this day, ‘ass’ and ‘arse’ remain culturally-connected homophones.