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A study of the implications and practices of wills and will-making in Anglo-Saxon society, and of the varieties of inheritance strategies and commemorative arrangements adopted. A remarkable series of Anglo-Saxon wills have survived, spanning the period from the beginning of the ninth century to the years immediately following the Norman Conquest. Written in Old English, they reflect the significance of the vernacular, not only in royal administration during this period, but in the recording of a range of individual transactions. They show wealthy laymen and women, and clerics, from kings and bishops to those of thegnly status, disposing of land and chattels, and recognising ties of kinship,...
The first broad-ranging social history in English of the medieval secular clergy.
This book of eleven essays by an international group of scholars in medieval studies honors the work of Barbara H. Rosenwein, Professor emerita of History at Loyola University Chicago. Part I, “Emotions and Communities,” comprises six essays that make use of Rosenwein’s well-known and widely influential work on the history of emotions and what Rosenwein has called “emotional communities.” These essays employ a wide variety of source material such as chronicles, monastic records, painting, music theory, and religious practice to elucidate emotional commonalities among the medieval people who experienced them. The five essays in Part II, “Communities and Difference,” explore different kinds of communities and have difference as their primary theme: difference between the poor and the unfree, between power as wielded by rulers or the clergy, between the western Mediterranean region and the rest of Europe, and between a supposedly great king and lesser ones.
Æthelflæd (c. 870–918), political leader, military strategist, and administrator of law, is one of the most important ruling women in English history. Despite her multifaceted roles and family legacy, however, her reign and relationship with other women in tenth-century England have never been the subject of a book-length study. This interdisciplinary collection of essays redresses a notable hiatus in scholarship of early medieval England. Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and Women in Tenth-Century England argues for a reassessment of women’s political, military, literary, and domestic agency. It invites deeper reflection on the female kinships, networks, and communities that give meaning to Æthelflæd’s life, and through this shows how medieval history can invite new engagements with the past.
Fresh perspectives on the English clergy, their books, and the wider Anglo-Saxon church.
“A critically sophisticated leap forward in the study of early medieval literature, Signs That Sing issues a bold challenge to long-held preconceptions about the relationships underlying Old English poetry between past and present, pagan and Christian, and oral and literary.”—Joseph Falaky Nagy, author of Conversing with Angels and Ancients: Literary Myths of Medieval Ireland “Maring sidesteps simplistic oral versus literary schools of thought as she considers Old English verse as the product of an emergent hybrid form, representing a fusion of native poetics and Christian beliefs and practices. A welcome contribution to oral poetics and the understanding of the earliest period of En...
SHORTLISTED for the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain's Hitchcock Medallion. A ground-breaking interdisciplinary approach to the medieval manor pre- and post-Conquest.
A historian examines the evolution of dissenting thought and how it shaped the transformation of England from a rural to an urban, industrialized society. The foundations for the Industrial Revolution were in place from the late Middle Ages, when the early development of manufacturing processes and changes in the structure of rural communities began to provide opportunities for economic and social advancement. Successive waves of Huguenot migrants and the influence of Northern European religious ideology also played an important role in this process. The Civil Wars would provide a catalyst for the dissemination of new ideas and help shape the emergence of a new English Protestantism and dive...
England is remarkable for the wealth and variety of its archival heritage – the records created and preserved by institutions, organisations and individuals. This is the first book to treat the history of English records creation and record-keeping from the perspective of the archives themselves. Beginning in the early Middle Ages and ending in modern times, it draws on the author’s extensive knowledge and experience as both archivist and historian, and presents the subject in a very readable and lively way. Some archives, notably those of government and the Established Church, have remarkably continuous histories. But all have suffered over time from periods of neglect and decay, and so...
"Professor Collette's approach to this challenging and provocative poem reflects her wide scholarly interests, her expertise in the area of representations of women in late medieval European society, and her conviction that the Legend of Good Women can be better understood when positioned within several of the era's intellectual concerns and historical contexts. The book will enrich the ongoing conversation among Chaucerians as to the significance of the Legend, both as an individual cultural production and an important constituent of Chaucer's poetic.achievement. A praiseworthy and useful monograph." Professor Robert Hanning, Columbia University. The Legend of Good Women has perhaps not alw...