First Published in 2004. Four things dominated the life of the mediaeval noble: warfare, politics, land and family. It is with these central themes that this book is concerned. It encompasses the whole of the upper segment of the late medieval society; examines the relation of social status and political influence; describes the noble household and council; examines in detail the territorial and familial policies pursued by great landholders; emphasises the inter-relationship of local and national affairs; is arranged thematically, making it ideal for student use and has implications for the whole medieval period.
This book presents an engaging, detailed portrait of the people, ideas, and beliefs that made up the world of English medieval medicine between 750 and 1450, a time when medical practice extended far beyond modern definitions. The institutions of court, church, university, and hospital--which would eventually work to separate medical practice from other duties--had barely begun to exert an influence in medieval England, writes Faye Getz. Sufferers could seek healing from men and women of all social ranks, and the healing could encompass spiritual, legal, and philosophical as well as bodily concerns. Here the author presents an account of practitioners (English Christians, Jews, and foreigners), of medical works written by the English, of the emerging legal and institutional world of medicine, and of the medical ideals present among the educated and social elite. How medical learning gained for itself an audience is the central argument of this book, but the journey, as Getz shows, was an intricate one. Along the way, the reader encounters the magistrates of London, who confiscate a bag said by its owner to contain a human head capable of learning to speak, and learned clerical practitioners who advise people on how best to remain healthy or die a good death. Islamic medical ideas as well as the poetry of Chaucer come under scrutiny. Among the remnants of this far distant medical past, anyone may find something to amuse and something to admire.
This new guide covers seven hundred years of English literature. Stephen Coote describes the major figures and works of the period - Beowulf, King Alfred, Chaucer, Langland, Henryson, the Gawain-poet and Malory as well as lesser-known poets. Considerable attention is given to Chaucer and the extensive treatment of 'Troilus and Criseyde' demonstrates the range of concerns that can be brought to a medieval text. Chapters are devoted to alliterative poetry, popular romance, ballad and lyric, medieval drama and Middle English prose, set against a background of the European literary tradition and of medieval circumstances and ways of thought. The discussion of the development of the language from Old English to Middle English show how, through the genius of Chaucer, it took 'its plae beside the great literary vernaculars of Europe'. -- Book cover.
This work presents a composite view of medieval English university life. The author offers detailed insights into the social and economic conditions of the lives of students, their teaching masters and fellows. The experiences of college benefactors, women and university servants are also examined, demonstrating the vibrancy they brought to university life. The second half of the book is concerned with the complex methods of teaching and learning, the regime of studies taught, the relationship between the universities in Oxford and Cambridge, as well as the relationship between "town" and "gown".
This book provocatively argues that much of what English writers of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries remembered about medieval English geography, history, religion and literature, they remembered by means of medieval and modern Scandinavia. These memories, in turn, figured in something even broader. Protestant and fundamentally monarchical, the Nordic countries constituted a politically kindred spirit in contrast with France, Italy and Spain. Along with the so-called Celtic fringe and overseas colonies, Scandinavia became one of the external reference points for the forging of the United Kingdom. Subject to the continual refashioning of memory, the region became at once an image of Britain’s noble past and an affirmation of its current global status, rendering trips there rides on a time machine.
Between 1200 and 1520 medieval English society went through a series of upheavals: this was an age of war, pestilence and rebellion. This book explores the realities of life of the people who lived through those stirring times. It looks in turn at aristocrats, peasants, townsmen, wage-earners and paupers, and examines how they obtained their incomes and how they spent them. This revised edition (1998) includes a substantial new concluding chapter and an updated bibliography.
This is a set of essays from many of the leading scholars in the world of medieval studies, which addresses a wide diversity of texts and genres and their diverse perspectives on love. Attention is given to interaction between English writings and putative continental and international influences, with particular emphasis on the works of Chaucer.
What was the social structure of England in the period 1200 to 1500? What were the basic forms of social inequality? To what extent did such divisions generate social conflict? How significantly did English society change during this period and what were the causes of social change? Is it useful to see medieval social structure in terms of the theories and concepts produced within the medieval period itself? What does modern social theory have to offer the historian seeking to understand English society in the later middle ages? These are the questions which this book seeks to answer. Beginning with an analysis of class structure of medieval England, Part One of this book asks to what extent class conflict was inherent within class relations and discusses the contrasting successes and outcomes of such conflict in town and country. Part Two of the book examines to what extent such class divisions interacted with other forms of social inequality, such as those between orders (nobility and clergy), between men and women, and those arising from membership of a status-group (the Jews). Dr Rigby's discussion of medieval English society is located within the context of recent historical and sociological debates about the nature of social stratification and, using the work of social theorists such as Parkin and Runciman, offers a synthesis of the Marxist and Weberian approaches to social structure. The book should be extremely useful to those undergraduates beginning their studies of medieval England whilst, in offering a new interpretative framework within which to examine social structure, also interesting those historians who are more familiar with this period.
Medieval England presents the political and cultural development of English society from the Norman Conquest to the end of the Wars of the Roses. It is a story of change, progress, setback, and consolidation, with England emerging as a wealthy and stable country, many of whose essential features were to remain unchanged until the Industrial Revolution. Edmund King traces his chronicle through the lives of successive monarchs, the inescapable central thread of that epoch. The momentous events of the times are also recreated, from the compiling of the Domesday Book, through the wars with the Scots, the Welsh, and the French, to the Peasants' Revolt and the disastrous Black Death.
