Download or read book The Secret Middle Ages written by Malcolm Jones and published by . This book was released on 2024-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Secret Middle Ages is a controversial and completely fresh view of the medieval world through its rare and amazing artefacts. Using the wealth of medieval art, much of it unseen or ignored by museums and art historians, Malcolm Jones paints a compelling picture of the visual environment of the great mass of ordinary people between 1200 and 1500. The picture that emerges is of a civilisation that is both like and unlike our own, one that teems with the richness of life and its contradictions. Unlike most studies of the medieval world, it does not concern itself greatly with religious or aristocratic art but with the products of popular and folk art. Here we find beliefs and traditions rendered memorable by the vivid creative imagination and strong visual culture of the middle ages. Love, hatred, crime and punishment, proverbs, heaven on earth, husband-beating - all feature in the jewellery, tableware, illustrations, carvings and textiles of the period. This book offers a major reassessment of the high medieval period and as such is not only important to specialist, but has much appeal to the general reader. It is essential reading for medievalists and those interested in the history of language and customs. It provides a brilliant and evocative picture of medieval Europe where people spent their time wearing their hearts on their sleeves, snapping sausages and getting bees in their bonnets. As Malcolm Jones writes, gems and precious metals may dazzle the eye, but a pewter brooch, though it may look tawdry, may be of more significance and can tell us more about the middle ages than a cofferful of royal jewels.
Download or read book Secret Societies of the Middle Ages written by Thomas Keightley and published by . This book was released on 1837 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Secret of Secrets written by Steven J. Williams and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling study of a "best-seller" from the Middle Ages
Download or read book Books Banks Buttons written by Chiara Frugoni and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identifies the technological innovations of the middle ages, noting how such ubiquitous items as eyeglasses, books, arabic numbers, underwear, banks, the game of chess, clocks, and domesticated cats came into being during the period.
Download or read book My Gay Middle Ages written by A. W. Strouse and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2015-05-13 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the world of My Gay Middle Ages, Chaucer and Boethius are the secret-sharers of A.W. Strouse's "gay lifestyle." Where many scholars of the Middle Ages would "get in from behind" on cultural history, Strouse instead does a "reach around." He eschews academic "queer theory" as yet another tedious, normative framework, and writes in the long, fruity tradition of irresponsible, homo-medievalism (a lineage that includes luminaries like Oscar Wilde, who was sustained by his amateur readings of Dante and Abelard during the darks days of his incarceration for crimes of "gross indecency"). Strouse experiences medieval literature and philosophy as a part of his everyday life, and in these prose poems he makes the case for regarding the Middle Ages as a kind of technology of self-preservation, a posture through which to spiritualize the petty indignities of modern urban life. With a Warholian flair for insouciant name-dropping and a Steinian appetite for syntactic perversion, Strouse monumentalizes the medieval within the contemporary and the contemporary within the medieval. "Today, almost nobody reads Boethius, which if you ask me is a crying shame. Because Boethius is so gay. First of all, the heroine of the Consolation is this great big fierce diva, whose name is Lady Philosophy. She's a Lady, and she doesn't stand for anybody's crap. At the beginning of the book, Boethius is crying, all alone in prison, depressed that he's lonely and loveless and is going to be killed. Lady Philosophy descends from the heavens, a la Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz. The first thing Boethius notices about her is that she's wearing an amazing dress with Greek letters embroidered on it-they stand for practical and theoretical philosophy. Her dress has been torn to shreds by the hands of uncouth philosophers. They didn't know how to treat a lady." (from "My Boethius") TABLE OF CONTENTS // The Most Famous Medievalist in the World - My Boethius - Memory Houses - The President of the Medieval Academy Made Me Cry - My Medieval Romance - The Formation of a Persecuting Society - The Medieval Heart is Like a Penis - Jilted Again - My Orpheus - Medieval Literacy - My Cloud of Unknowing - The Post-Medieval Unconscious - Coda: The Dedication"
Download or read book Women s Secrets written by Helen Rodnite Lemay and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1992-10-14 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Womens Secrets provides the first modern translation of the notorious treatise De secretis mulierum, popular throughout the late middle ages and into modern times. The Secrets deals with human reproduction and was written to instruct celibate medieval monks on the facts of life and some of the ways of the universe. However, the book had a much more far-reaching influence. Lemay shows how its message that women were evil, lascivious creatures built on the misogyny of the works Aristotelian sources and laid the groundwork for serious persecution of women. Both the content of the treatise and the reputation of its author (erroneously believed to be Albertus Magnus) inspired a few medieval scholars to compose lengthy commentaries on the text, substantial selections from which are included, providing further evidence of how medieval men interpreted science and viewed the female body.
Download or read book The Secret Middle Ages written by Malcolm Jones and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 2002 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book offers a major reassessment of the high medieval period and as such is not only important to specialists, but has much to appeal to the general reader. It is essential reading for medievalists and those interested in the history of language and customs."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Bright Ages written by Matthew Gabriele and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The beauty and levity that Perry and Gabriele have captured in this book are what I think will help it to become a standard text for general audiences for years to come….The Bright Ages is a rare thing—a nuanced historical work that almost anyone can enjoy reading.”—Slate "Incandescent and ultimately intoxicating." —The Boston Globe A lively and magisterial popular history that refutes common misperceptions of the European Middle Ages, showing the beauty and communion that flourished alongside the dark brutality—a brilliant reflection of humanity itself. The word “medieval” conjures images of the “Dark Ages”—centuries of ignorance, superstition, stasis, savagery, and poor hygiene. But the myth of darkness obscures the truth; this was a remarkable period in human history. The Bright Ages recasts the European Middle Ages for what it was, capturing this 1,000-year era in all its complexity and fundamental humanity, bringing to light both its beauty and its horrors. The Bright Ages takes us through ten centuries and crisscrosses Europe and the Mediterranean, Asia and Africa, revisiting familiar people and events with new light cast upon them. We look with fresh eyes on the Fall of Rome, Charlemagne, the Vikings, the Crusades, and the Black Death, but also to the multi-religious experience of Iberia, the rise of Byzantium, and the genius of Hildegard and the power of queens. We begin under a blanket of golden stars constructed by an empress with Germanic, Roman, Spanish, Byzantine, and Christian bloodlines and end nearly 1,000 years later with the poet Dante—inspired by that same twinkling celestial canopy—writing an epic saga of heaven and hell that endures as a masterpiece of literature today. The Bright Ages reminds us just how permeable our manmade borders have always been and of what possible worlds the past has always made available to us. The Middle Ages may have been a world “lit only by fire” but it was one whose torches illuminated the magnificent rose windows of cathedrals, even as they stoked the pyres of accused heretics. The Bright Ages contains an 8-page color insert.
Download or read book The Gilded Page written by Mary Wellesley and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A breathtaking journey into the hidden history of medieval manuscripts, from the Lindisfarne Gospels to the ornate Psalter of Henry VIII “A delight—immersive, conversational, and intensely visual, full of gorgeous illustrations and shimmering description.” –Helen Castor, author of She-Wolves Medieval manuscripts can tell us much about power and art, knowledge and beauty. Many have survived because of an author’s status—part of the reason we have so much of Chaucer’s writing, for example, is because he was a London-based government official first and a poet second. Other works by the less influential have narrowly avoided ruin, like the book of illiterate Margery Kempe, found in a country house closet, the cover nibbled on by mice. Scholar Mary Wellesley recounts the amazing origins of these remarkable manuscripts, surfacing the important roles played by women and ordinary people—the grinders, binders, and scribes—in their creation and survival. The Gilded Page is the story of the written word in the manuscript age. Rich and surprising, it shows how the most exquisite objects ever made by human hands came from unexpected places. “Mary Wellesley is a born storyteller and The Gilded Page is as good as historical writing gets. This is a sensational debut by a wonderfully gifted historian.” —Dan Jones, bestselling author of The Plantagenets and The Templars
Download or read book Hild written by Nicola Griffith and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daughter of a poisoned prince and a crafty noblewoman, quiet, bright-minded Hild arrives at the court of King Edwin of Northumbria, where the six-year-old takes on the role of seer/consiglieri for a monarch troubled by shifting allegiances and Roman emissaries attempting to spread their new religion.
Download or read book Reason and Society in the Middle Ages written by Alexander Murray and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1978 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book concentrates on the 250 years beteen the late 11th and early 14th centuries and studies two key facets of the rationalistic tradition.
Download or read book Paris in the Middle Ages written by Simone Roux and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2009-04-28 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Centering on the streets of this metropolis, Simone Roux peers into the secret lives of people within their homes and the public world of affairs and entertainments, populating the book with laborers, shop keepers, magistrates, thieves, and strollers.
Download or read book The Middle Ages written by Eleanor Janega and published by Icon Books. This book was released on 2021-06-03 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique, illustrated book that will change the way you see medieval history The Middle Ages: A Graphic History busts the myth of the 'Dark Ages', shedding light on the medieval period's present-day relevance in a unique illustrated style. This history takes us through the rise and fall of empires, papacies, caliphates and kingdoms; through the violence and death of the Crusades, Viking raids, the Hundred Years War and the Plague; to the curious practices of monks, martyrs and iconoclasts. We'll see how the foundations of the modern West were established, influencing our art, cultures, religious practices and ways of thinking. And we'll explore the lives of those seen as 'Other' - women, Jews, homosexuals, lepers, sex workers and heretics. Join historian Eleanor Janega and illustrator Neil Max Emmanuel on a romp across continents and kingdoms as we discover the Middle Ages to be a time of huge change, inquiry and development - not unlike our own.
Download or read book The Very Secret Sex Lives of Medieval Women written by Rosalie Gilbert and published by Mango Media Inc.. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “wickedly entertaining, informative and thought-provoking” look at romance, courtship, and other intimacies behind closed Medieval doors (Dr. Markus Kerr, PhD, MDR). Were medieval women slaves to their husband’s desires, jealously secured in a chastity belt in his absence? Was sex a duty or could it be a pleasure? Did a woman have a say about her own female sexuality, body, and who did or didn’t get up close and personal with it? No. And yes. It’s complicated. The intimate lives of medieval women were as complex as for modern women. They loved and lost, hoped and schemed, were lifted up and cast down. They were hopeful and lovelorn. Some had it forced upon them, others made aphrodisiacs and dressed for success. Some were chaste and some were lusty. Having sex was complicated. Not having sex, was even more so. Inside The Very Secret Sex Lives of Medieval Women, a fascinating book about life during medieval times, you will discover tantalizing true stories about medieval women and a myriad of historical facts. Learn about: The true experiences of women from all classes, including women who made history The dos and don’ts in the bedroom Sexy foods and how to have them All you need to know for your wedding night, and well as insider medical advice How to get pregnant (and how not to), and more “Quite compelling and hilariously funny. I have been chuckling out loud and my husband says he thinks he ought to read it if it’s such a tonic. God forbid!” —Susanna Newstead, author of the Savernake Novels
Download or read book Incarceration and Slavery in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age written by Albrecht Classen and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People in the Middle Ages and the early modern age more often suffered from imprisonment and enslavement than we might have assumed. Incarceration and Slavery in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age approaches these topics from a wide variety of perspectives and demonstrates collectively the great relevance of the issues involved. Both incarceration and slavery were (and continue to be) most painful experiences, and no one was guaranteed exemption from it. High-ranking nobles and royalties were often the victims of imprisonment and, at times, had to wait many years until their ransom was paid. Similarly, slavery existed throughout Christian Europe and in the Arab world. However, while imprisonment occasionally proved to be the catalyst for major writings and creativity, slaves in the Ottoman empire and in Egypt succeeded in rising to the highest position in society (Janissaries, Mamluks, and others).
Download or read book Books of Knowledge in Late Medieval Europe written by Pavlina Cermanova and published by . This book was released on 2021-06-30 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a series of studies concerning unique medieval texts that can be defined as 'books of knowledge', such as medieval chronicles, bestiaries, or catechetic handbooks. Thus far, scholarship of intellectual history has focused on concepts of knowledge to describe a specific community, or to delimit intellectuals in society. However, the specific textual tool for the transmission of knowledge has been missing. Besides oral tradition, books and other written texts were the only sources of knowledge, and they were thus invaluable in efforts to receive or transfer knowledge. That is one reason why texts that proclaim to introduce a specific field of expertise or promise to present a summary of wisdom were so popular. These texts discussed cosmology, theology, philosophy, the natural sciences, history, and other fields. They often did so in an accessible way to maintain the potential to also attract a non-specialised public. The basic form was usually a narrative, chronologically or thematically structured, and clearly ordered to appeal to readers. Books of this kind could be disseminated in dozens or even hundreds of copies, and were often available (by translation or adaptation) in various languages, including the vernacular. In exploring these widely-disseminated and highly popular texts that offered a precise segment of knowledge that could be accessed by readers outside the intellectual and social elite, this volume intends to introduce books of knowledge as a new category within the study of medieval literacy.
Download or read book Medieval Bodies written by Jack Hartnell and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2018-03-29 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 'A triumph' Guardian 'Glorious ... makes the past at once familiar, exotic and thrilling.' Dominic Sandbrook 'A brilliant book' Mail on Sunday Just like us, medieval men and women worried about growing old, got blisters and indigestion, fell in love and had children. And yet their lives were full of miraculous and richly metaphorical experiences radically different to our own, unfolding in a world where deadly wounds might be healed overnight by divine intervention, or the heart of a king, plucked from his corpse, could be held aloft as a powerful symbol of political rule. In this richly-illustrated and unusual history, Jack Hartnell uncovers the fascinating ways in which people thought about, explored and experienced their physical selves in the Middle Ages, from Constantinople to Cairo and Canterbury. Unfolding like a medieval pageant, and filled with saints, soldiers, caliphs, queens, monks and monstrous beasts, it throws light on the medieval body from head to toe - revealing the surprisingly sophisticated medical knowledge of the time in the process. Bringing together medicine, art, music, politics, philosophy and social history, there is no better guide to what life was really like for the men and women who lived and died in the Middle Ages. Medieval Bodies is published in association with Wellcome Collection.