Download or read book William of Malmesbury and the Ethics of History written by Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn and published by Boydell Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.
Download or read book William of Malmesbury s Chronicle of the Kings of England written by William (of Malmesbury) and published by . This book was released on 1895 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Royal Responsibility in Anglo Norman Historical Writing written by Emily A. Winkler and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-13 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Writing the North of England in the Middle Ages written by Joseph Taylor and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-31 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncovering the medieval origin of England's North-South divide, Joseph Taylor examines the complex dynamics of regionalism and nationalism.
Download or read book Royal Rage and the Construction of Anglo Norman Authority c 1000 1250 written by Kate McGrath and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-02-18 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how eleventh- and twelfth-century Anglo-Norman ecclesiastical authors attributed anger to kings in the exercise of their duties, and how such attributions related to larger expansions of royal authority. It argues that ecclesiastical writers used their works to legitimize certain displays of royal anger, often resulting in violence, while at the same time deploying a shared emotional language that also allowed them to condemn other types of displays. These texts are particularly concerned about displays of anger in regard to suppressing revolt, ensuring justice, protecting honor, and respecting the status of kingship. In all of these areas, the role of ecclesiastical and lay counsel forms an important limit on the growth and expansion of royal prerogatives.
Download or read book Producing Christian Culture written by Giles E. M. Gasper and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-06-26 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Producing Christian Culture takes as its thread the 'interpretative genres' within which medieval people engaged with the Bible. Contributors to the volume present specific material as a case study illustrative of a specific genre, whether devotional, homiletical, scholarly, or controversial. The chronological range moves from St Augustine to the use of gospel texts in polemical writing of the first two decades of the 1500s, with focal sections on early medieval Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian theology, the scholastic turn of the High Middle Ages, and the influence of vernacular writing in the later Middle Ages. The tremendous range and vitality of medieval responses to biblical texts are highlighted within the studies.
Download or read book Remembering the Medieval Present Generative Uses of England s Pre Conquest Past 10th to 15th Centuries written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-09-16 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of essays focuses on how individuals living in the late tenth through fifteenth centuries engaged with the authorizing culture of the Anglo-Saxons. Drawing from a reservoir of undertreated early English documents and texts, each contributor shows how individual poets, ecclesiasts, legists, and institutions claimed Anglo-Saxon predecessors for rhetorical purposes in response to social, cultural, and linguistic change. Contributors trouble simple definitions of identity and period, exploring how medieval authors looked to earlier periods of history to define social identities and make claims for their present moment based on the political fiction of an imagined community of a single, distinct nation unified in identity by descent and religion. Contributors are Cynthia Turner Camp, Irina Dumitrescu, Jay Paul Gates, Erin Michelle Goeres, Mary Kate Hurley, Maren Clegg Hyer, Nicole Marafioti, Brian O’Camb, Kathleen Smith, Carla María Thomas, Larissa Tracy, and Eric Weiskott. See inside the book.
Download or read book The Medieval Gift and the Classical Tradition written by Lars Kjaer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-29 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how classical ideals of generosity influenced the writing and practice of gift giving in medieval Europe.
Download or read book Abbatial Authority and the Writing of History in the Middle Ages written by Benjamin Pohl and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-08-22 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that abbatial authority was fundamental to monastic historical writing in the period c.500-1500. Writing history was a collaborative enterprise integral to the life and identity of medieval monastic communities, but it was not an activity for which time and resources were set aside routinely. Each act of historiographical production constituted an extraordinary event, one for which singular provision had to be made, workers and materials assigned, time carved out from the monastic routine, and licence granted. This allocation of human and material resources was the responsibility and prerogative of the monastic superior. Drawing on a wide and diverse range of primary evidence gathered from across the medieval Latin West, this book is the first to investigate systematically how and why abbots and abbesses exercised their official authority and resources to lay the foundations on which their communities' historiographical traditions were built by themselves and others. It showcases them as prolific authors, patrons, commissioners, project managers, and facilitators of historical narratives who not only regularly put pen to parchment personally, but also, and perhaps more importantly, enabled others inside and outside their communities by granting them the resources and licence to write. Revealing the intrinsic relationship between abbatial authority and the writing of history in the Middle Ages with unprecedented clarity, Benjamin Pohl urges us to revisit and revise our understanding of monastic historiography, its processes, and its protagonists in ways that require some radical rethinking of the medieval historian's craft in communal and institutional contexts.
Download or read book Orderic Vitalis written by Charles C. Rozier and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2016 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First full-length collection on one of the most significant and influential historians of the medieval period.
Download or read book Gesta Pontificum Anglorum written by William (of Malmesbury) and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2007 with total page 729 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " ... second volume ... contains an introduction and detailed commentary to accompany the Latin text and translation of the work appearing in Volume I. The introduction presents and analyses the reasons behind the work ... The commentary, linked to the Latin text, discusses problems and questions thrown up by the work, and illustrations appear throughout."--Jacket.
Download or read book History A Very Short Introduction written by John Arnold and published by Oxford Paperbacks. This book was released on 2000-02-24 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting with an examination of how historians work, this "Very Short Introduction" aims to explore history in a general, pithy, and accessible manner, rather than to delve into specific periods.
Download or read book Gender Nation and Conquest in the Works of William of Malmesbury written by Kirsten A. Fenton and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2008 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William of Malmesbury is one of the most important English historians of the twelfth century -- not only a critical period in English history, but also one that has been recognised as significant in terms of the writing of history and the construction of a national past. This innovative study provides a gendered reading of Malmesbury's works with special reference to the themes of conquest and nation. It considers Malmesbury's presentation of men and women (both lay and religious) through categories based on attributes, such as sexual behaviour and violence, rather than the more familiar `professional' or familial roles, such as warrior and wife. It is also concerned with language and how the topics of conquest and nation are discussed in gendered terms. Importantly, attention is paid to Malmesbury's own position as a post-conquest chronicler, writing at a time of church reform, and to the impact the changes had upon the construction of the stories he narrates. KIRSTEN A. FENTON holds a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh.
Download or read book The Cursed Carolers in Context written by Lynneth Miller Renberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-23 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cursed Carolers in Context explores the interplay between the forms and contexts in which the tale of the cursed carolers circulated and the meanings it had for medieval and early modern authors and audiences. The story of the cursed carolers has circulated in Europe since the eleventh century. In this story, a group of people in a village in Saxony skip Christmas mass to perform a circle dance in the cemetery, only to be cursed and forced to keep dancing for a whole year. By approaching the story in specific historical contexts, this book shows how the story of the cursed carolers became a space in which medieval readers, writers, and listeners could debate the meaning and significance of a surprising variety of questions, including ecclesiastical authority, gender roles, pastoral responsibility, and even the conduct of crusades. This consideration of the interplay between text and context sheds new light on how and why the story of the dancers achieved such popularity in the Middle Ages, and how its meanings developed and changed throughout the period. This book will appeal to scholars and students of medieval European history, literature, and dance, as well as those interested in cultural history.
Download or read book William of Malmesbury s Chronicle of the Kings of England written by William (of Malmesbury) and published by . This book was released on 1866 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Laughter and Power in the Twelfth Century written by Peter J. A. Jones and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-24 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Towards the end of the twelfth century, powerful images of laughing kings and saints began to appear in texts circulating at the English royal court. At the same time, contemporaries began celebrating the wit, humour, and laughter of King Henry II (r.1154-89) and his martyred Archbishop of Canterbury, Saint Thomas Becket (d.1170). Taking a broad genealogical approach, Laughter and Power in the Twelfth Century traces the emergence of this powerful laughter through an immersive study of medieval intellectual, literary, social, religious, and political debates. Focusing on a cultural renaissance in England, the study situates laughter at the heart of the defining transformations of the second half of the 1100s. With an expansive survey of theological and literary texts, bringing a range of unedited manuscript material to light in the process, Peter J. A. Jones exposes how twelfth-century writers came to connect laughter with spiritual transcendence and justice, and how this connection gave humour a unique political and spiritual power in both text and action. Ultimately, Jones argues that England's popular images of laughing kings and saints effectively reinstated a sublime charismatic authority, something truly rebellious at a moment in history when bureaucracy and codification were first coming to dominate European political life.
Download or read book The Long Twelfth Century View of the Anglo Saxon Past written by Martin Brett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars have long been interested in the extent to which the Anglo-Saxon past can be understood using material written, and produced, in the twelfth century; and simultaneously in the continued importance (or otherwise) of the Anglo-Saxon past in the generations following the Norman Conquest of England. In order to better understand these issues, this volume provides a series of essays that moves scholarship forward in two significant ways. Firstly, it scrutinises how the Anglo-Saxon past continued to be reused and recycled throughout the longue durée of the twelfth century, as opposed to the early decades that are usually covered. Secondly, by bringing together scholars who are experts in various different scholarly disciplines, the volume deals with a much broader range of historical, linguistic, legal, artistic, palaeographical and cultic evidence than has hitherto been the case. Divided into four main parts: The Anglo-Saxon Saints; Anglo-Saxon England in the Narrative of Britain; Anglo-Saxon Law and Charter; and Art-history and the French Vernacular, it scrutinises the majority of different genres of source material that are vital in any study of early medieval British history. In so doing the resultant volume will become a standard reference point for students and scholars alike interested in the ways in which the Anglo-Saxon past continued to be of importance and interest throughout the twelfth century.
