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Author: Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn Publisher: Boydell Press ISBN: 1843837099 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 304
Book Description
"William of Malmesbury, arguably the greatest English historian of the twelfth century, repeatedly emphasises that the primary purpose of all literary and intellectual activities is to provide moral instruction for the reader, the most famous of his statements to this effect being found in his monumental work Gesta Regum Anglorum, where he categorises history as a sub-discipline of ethics. However, modern studies have chosen to focus on other aspects of William's oeuvre and tended to dismiss such claims as perfunctory nods to a pious commonplace. This book differs from recent orthodoxy by being based on the proposition that medieval professions of the moral aims of historiography are in fact genuine. It seeks to read William's celebrated historical works in the light of his devotional and didactic texts, and in the context of the religious, intellectual and literary traditions to which he expressed his allegiance. He also demonstrates how William's conception of ethics forms a constitutive element of his historical output. The resulting image of William shows a committed monk and man of his time, placing his extraordinary learning at the service of his culture, his society and his faith."--Publisher's website.
Author: Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn Publisher: Boydell Press ISBN: 1843837099 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 304
Book Description
"William of Malmesbury, arguably the greatest English historian of the twelfth century, repeatedly emphasises that the primary purpose of all literary and intellectual activities is to provide moral instruction for the reader, the most famous of his statements to this effect being found in his monumental work Gesta Regum Anglorum, where he categorises history as a sub-discipline of ethics. However, modern studies have chosen to focus on other aspects of William's oeuvre and tended to dismiss such claims as perfunctory nods to a pious commonplace. This book differs from recent orthodoxy by being based on the proposition that medieval professions of the moral aims of historiography are in fact genuine. It seeks to read William's celebrated historical works in the light of his devotional and didactic texts, and in the context of the religious, intellectual and literary traditions to which he expressed his allegiance. He also demonstrates how William's conception of ethics forms a constitutive element of his historical output. The resulting image of William shows a committed monk and man of his time, placing his extraordinary learning at the service of his culture, his society and his faith."--Publisher's website.
Author: Joseph Taylor Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1009182110 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 275
Book Description
Uncovering the medieval origin of England's North-South divide, Joseph Taylor examines the complex dynamics of regionalism and nationalism.
Author: Robert F. Berkhofer, III Publisher: Boydell & Brewer ISBN: 1783276916 Category : Europe Languages : en Pages : 344
Book Description
A close analysis of forgeries and historical writings at Saint Peter''s, Ghent; Saint-Denis near Paris; and Christ Church, Canterbury, offering valuable access to why medieval people often rewrote their pasts.What modern scholars call "forgeries" (be they texts, seals, coins, or relics) flourished in the central Middle Ages. Although lying was considered wrong throughout the period, such condemnation apparently did not extend to forgeries. Rewriting documents was especially common among monks, who exploited their mastery of writing to reshape their records. Monastic scribes frequently rewrote their archives, using charters, letters, and narratives, to create new usable pasts for claiming lands and privileges in their present or future. Such imagined histories could also be deployed to "reform" their community or reshape its relationship with lay and ecclesiastical authorities. Although these creative rewritings were forgeries, they still can be valuable evidence of medieval mentalities. While forgeries cannot easily be used to reconstruct what did happen, forgeries embedded in historical narratives show what their composers believed should have happened and thus they offer valuable access to why medieval people rewrote their pasts.This book offers close analysis of three monastic archives over the long eleventh century: Saint Peter''s, Ghent; Saint-Denis near Paris; and Christ Church, Canterbury. These foci provide the basis for contextualizing key shifts in documentary culture in the twelfth century across Europe. Overall, the book argues that connections between monastic forgeries and historical writing in the tenth through twelfth centuries reveal attempts to reshape reality. Both sought to rewrite the past and thereby promote monks'' interests in their present or future. easily be used to reconstruct what did happen, forgeries embedded in historical narratives show what their composers believed should have happened and thus they offer valuable access to why medieval people rewrote their pasts.This book offers close analysis of three monastic archives over the long eleventh century: Saint Peter''s, Ghent; Saint-Denis near Paris; and Christ Church, Canterbury. These foci provide the basis for contextualizing key shifts in documentary culture in the twelfth century across Europe. Overall, the book argues that connections between monastic forgeries and historical writing in the tenth through twelfth centuries reveal attempts to reshape reality. Both sought to rewrite the past and thereby promote monks'' interests in their present or future. easily be used to reconstruct what did happen, forgeries embedded in historical narratives show what their composers believed should have happened and thus they offer valuable access to why medieval people rewrote their pasts.This book offers close analysis of three monastic archives over the long eleventh century: Saint Peter''s, Ghent; Saint-Denis near Paris; and Christ Church, Canterbury. These foci provide the basis for contextualizing key shifts in documentary culture in the twelfth century across Europe. Overall, the book argues that connections between monastic forgeries and historical writing in the tenth through twelfth centuries reveal attempts to reshape reality. Both sought to rewrite the past and thereby promote monks'' interests in their present or future. easily be used to reconstruct what did happen, forgeries embedded in historical narratives show what their composers believed should have happened and thus they offer valuable access to why medieval people rewrote their pasts.This book offers close analysis of three monastic archives over the long eleventh century: Saint Peter''s, Ghent; Saint-Denis near Paris; and Christ Church, Canterbury. These foci provide the basis for contextualizing key shifts in documentary culture in the twelfth century across Europe. Overall, the book argues that connections between monastic forgeries and historical writing in the tenth through twelfth centuries reveal attempts to reshape reality. Both sought to rewrite the past and thereby promote monks'' interests in their present or future.lose analysis of three monastic archives over the long eleventh century: Saint Peter''s, Ghent; Saint-Denis near Paris; and Christ Church, Canterbury. These foci provide the basis for contextualizing key shifts in documentary culture in the twelfth century across Europe. Overall, the book argues that connections between monastic forgeries and historical writing in the tenth through twelfth centuries reveal attempts to reshape reality. Both sought to rewrite the past and thereby promote monks'' interests in their present or future.
Author: Emily Anne Winkler Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0198812388 Category : HISTORY Languages : en Pages : 350
Book Description
It has long been established that the crisis of 1066 generated a florescence of historical writing in the first half of the twelfth century. Emily A. Winkler presents a new perspective on previously unqueried matters, investigating how historians' individual motivations and assumptions produced changes in the kind of history written across the Conquest. She argues that responses to the Danish Conquest of 1016 and the Norman Conquest of 1066 changed dramatically within two generations of the latter conquest. Repeated conquest could signal repeated failures and sin across the orders of society, yet early twelfth-century historians in England not only extract English kings and people from a history of failure, but also establish English kingship as a worthy office on a European scale. Royal Responsibility in Anglo-Norman Historical Writing illuminates the consistent historical agendas of four historians: William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, John of Worcester, and Geffrei Gaimar. In their narratives of England's eleventh-century history, these twelfth-century historians expanded their approach to historical explanation to include individual responsibility and accountability within a framework of providential history. In this regard, they made substantial departures from their sources. These historians share a view of royal responsibility independent both of their sources (primarily the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) and of any political agenda that placed English and Norman allegiances in opposition. Although the accounts diverge widely in the interpretation of character, all four are concerned more with the effectiveness of England's kings than with the legitimacy of their origins. Their new, shared view of royal responsibility represents a distinct phenomenon in England's twelfth-century historiography.
Author: Daniel M. G. Gerrard Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317038312 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 330
Book Description
The fighting bishop or abbot is a familiar figure to medievalists and much of what is known of the military organization of England in this period is based on ecclesiastical evidence. Unfortunately the fighting cleric has generally been regarded as merely a baron in clerical dress and has consequently fallen into the gap between military and ecclesiastical history. This study addresses three main areas: which clergy engaged in military activity in England, why and when? By what means did they do so? And how did others understand and react to these activities? The book shows that, however vivid such characters as Odo of Bayeux might be in the historical imagination, there was no archetypal militant prelate. There was enormous variation in the character of the clergy that became involved in warfare, their circumstances, the means by which they pursued their military objectives and the way in which they were treated by contemporaries and described by chroniclers. An appreciation of the individual fighting cleric must be both thematically broad and keenly aware of his context. Such individuals cannot therefore be simply slotted into easy categories, even (or perhaps especially) when those categories are informed by contemporary polemic. The implications of this study for our understanding of clerical identity are considerable, as the easy distinction between clerics acting in a secular or ecclesiastical capacity almost entirely breaks down and the legal structures of the period are shown to be almost as equivocal and idiosyncratic as the literary depictions. The implications for military history are equally striking as organisational structures are shown to be more temporary, fluid and 'political' than had previously been understood.
Author: Thomas W. Smith Publisher: University of Wales Press ISBN: 1786835053 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 134
Book Description
Exploring Latin texts, as well as Old French, Castilian and Occitan songs and lyrics, Remembering the Crusades in Medieval Texts and Songs takes inspiration from the new ways scholars are looking to trace the dissemination and influence of the memories and narratives surrounding the crusading past in medieval Europe. It contributes to these new directions in crusade studies by offering a more nuanced understanding of the diverse ways in which medieval authors presented events, people and places central to the crusading movement. This volume investigates how the transmission of stories related to suffering, heroism, the miraculous and ideals of masculinity helped to shape ideas of crusading presented in narratives produced in both the Latin East and the West, as well as the importance of Jerusalem in the lyric cultures of southern France, and how the narrative arc of the First Crusade developed from the earliest written and oral responses to the venture.
Author: Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn
Author: Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn
Author: Joseph Taylor
Author: Lars Kjær
Author: William (of Malmesbury)
Author: Robert F. Berkhofer, III
Author: Judith A. Green
Author: Emily Anne Winkler
Author: Daniel M. G. Gerrard
Author: C. P. Lewis
Author: Thomas W. Smith