Far from the oral society it was once assumed to have been, early medieval Europe was fundamentally shaped by the written word. This book offers a pioneering collection of fresh and innovative studies on a wide range of topics, each one representing cutting-edge scholarship, and collectively setting the field on a new footing. Concentrating on the role of writing in mediating early medieval knowledge of the past, on the importance of surviving manuscripts as clues to the circulation of ideas and political and cultural creativity, and on the role that texts of different kinds played both in supporting and in subverting established power relations, these essays represent a milestone in studies of the early medieval written word.
An exploration of life in the early medieval West, using pigs as a lens to investigate agriculture, ecology, economy, and philosophy From North Africa to the British Isles, pigs were a crucial part of agriculture and culture in the early medieval period. Jamie Kreiner examines how this ubiquitous species was integrated into early medieval ecologies and transformed the way that people thought about the world around them. In this world, even the smallest things could have far‑reaching consequences. Kreiner tracks the interlocking relationships between pigs and humans by drawing on textual and visual evidence, bioarchaeology and settlement archaeology, and mammal biology. She shows how early medieval communities bent their own lives in order to accommodate these tricky animals—and how in the process they reconfigured their agrarian regimes, their fiscal policies, and their very identities. In the end, even the pig’s own identity was transformed: by the close of the early Middle Ages, it had become a riveting metaphor for Christianity itself.
The papers gathered in this volume were all given in 1999 - at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds and during a day conference held at York. They agree that looking at the wide range of narrative forms available provides new ways of viewing the Middle Ages.
Essays suggest or explore reasons why violent acts might have been perpetrated, and attempt to understand the social priorities which governed such acts. Thought-provoking and characterized by a high level of scholarship. HISTORYAn important addition to the dialogue concerning the nature of conflict and its resolution in the early medieval West. HISTORIAN [US] The `violence' oflife in the middle ages is nowadays both taken for granted and little understood. The essays in this collection all suggest or explore reasons why violent acts might have been perpetrated, and attempt to understand the social priorities which governed such acts. Broadly, the studies clarify issues relating to the creation of political identities and the establishment of social order, and cover matters of administration, religious ritual, and gender.Contributors: GUY HALSALL, LUIS A. GARCIA MORENO, PAUL FOURACRE, T.S. BROWN, JANET L. NELSON, N.B. AITCHISON, MATTHEW BENNETT, GUY A.E. MORRIS, S.J. SPEIGHT, ROSS BALZARETTI, JULIE COLEMAN, NANCY L. WICKER. GUY HALSALL is lecturer in the Department of History, Birkbeck College, University of London. Contributors: GUY HALSALL, LUIS A. GARCIA MORENO, PAUL FOURACRE, T.S. BROWN, JANET L. NELSON, N.B. AITCHISON, MATTHEW BENNETT, GUY A.E. MORRIS, S.J. SPEIGHT, ROSS BALZARETTI, JULIE COLEMAN, NANCY L. WICKER.
Monasticism, in all of its variations, was a feature of almost every landscape in the medieval West. So ubiquitous were religious women and men throughout the Middle Ages that all medievalists encounter monasticism in their intellectual worlds. While there is enormous interest in medieval monasticism among Anglophone scholars, language is often a barrier to accessing some of the most important and groundbreaking research emerging from Europe. The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West offers a comprehensive treatment of medieval monasticism, from Late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages. The essays, specially commissioned for this volume and written by an international team of scholars, with contributors from Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, cover a range of topics and themes and represent the most up-to-date discoveries on this topic.
This collection of essays deals with a broad range of issues within the study, past and present, of the early Middle Ages. Subjects include war, power, ethnicity, gender, Charlemagne and Carolingian history. The book is largely concerned with reading the sources, both medieval and modern, and interpreting their narrators.
Informed by multicultural, multidisciplinary perspectives, The Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature offers a new exploration of the earliest writing in Britain and Ireland, from the end of the Roman Empire to the mid-twelfth century. Beginning with an account of writing itself, as well as of scripts and manuscript art, subsequent chapters examine the earliest texts from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and the tremendous breadth of Anglo-Latin literature. Chapters on English learning and literature in the ninth century and the later formation of English poetry and prose also convey the profound cultural confidence of the period. Providing a discussion of essential texts, including Beowulf and the writings of Bede, this History captures the sheer inventiveness and vitality of early medieval literary culture through topics as diverse as the literature of English law, liturgical and devotional writing, the workings of science and the history of women's writing.
"Wormald's essays seek to establish that legal history is not just the history of law, nor even that of society, but also that of elite and popular culture in complex and creative symbiosis. This collection will appeal to all interested in the institutions and ideologies of the premodern world."--BOOK JACKET.