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Author: Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn
Publisher: Boydell Press
ISBN: 1843837099
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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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
Get Book Here
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: Emily A. Winkler
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192540424
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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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: William (of Malmesbury)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 604
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Book Description
Author: Dr Matthew Firth
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1914049195
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
Offers insights into the political, social and cultural interests that informed the shaping of England's pre-Conquest history. The Norman Conquest brought about great change in England: new customs, a new language, and new political and ecclesiastical hierarchies. It also saw the emergence of an Anglo-Norman intellectual culture, with an innate curiosity in the past. For the pre-eminent twelfth-century English historians - such as Eadmer of Canterbury, William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon - the pre-Conquest past was of abiding interest. While they recognised the disruptions of the Conquest, this was accompanied by an awareness that it was but one part of a longer story, stretching back to sub-Roman Britain. This concept of a continuum of English history that traversed the events of 1066 would prove enduring, being transmitted into and by the works of successive generations of medieval English historians. This collection sheds new light on the perceptions and uses of the pre-Conquest past in post-Conquest historiography, drawing on a variety of approaches, from historical and literary studies, to codicology, historiography, memory theory and life writing. Its essays are arranged around two main interlinked themes: post-Conquest historiographical practice and how identities - institutional, regional and personal - could be constructed in reference to this past. Alongside their analyses of the works of Eadmer, William and Henry, contributors offer engaging studies of the works of such authors as Aelred of Rievaulx, Orderic Vitalis, Gervase of Canterbury, John of Worcester, Richard of Devizes, and Walter Map, as well as numerous anonymous hagiographies and histories.
Author: Joseph Taylor
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009182110
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
Uncovering the medieval origin of England's North-South divide, Joseph Taylor examines the complex dynamics of regionalism and nationalism.
Author: Giles E. M. Gasper
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317075439
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 229
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Book Description
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.
Author: Kate McGrath
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030112233
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229
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Book Description
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.
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004408339
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349
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Book Description
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.
Author: Benjamin Pohl
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192514709
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433
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Book Description
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.
Author: Lars Kjaer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108424023
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 237
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Book Description
Explores how classical ideals of generosity influenced the writing and practice of gift giving in medieval Europe.
