"This book presents exciting new research on the society and culture of medieval Rouen by British and Continental historians. Divided into three sections, addressing space and representation, religious culture, and social networks, the volume is both wide-ranging and tightly focused. The key themes include Rouen's relationship with its environs, image and identity, social and political relationships, and Rouen's status as the 'capital' of Normandy. The essays discuss topics ranging from urban development and charity, to the city's aristocratic and ecclesiastical elites, the Jewish community, and the relationship of the Angevin kings with sRouen."--Page 4 of cover.

"The Medieval Risk-Reward Society" offers a study of adventure and love in the European Middle Ages focused on the poetry of authors such as Marie de France, Chretien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Gottfried von Strassburg-showing how a society based on sacrifice becomes one of wagers and investments. Will Hasty's sociological approach to medieval courtly literature, informed by the analytic tools of game theory, reveals the blossoming of a worldview in which outcomes are uncertain, such that the very self (of a character or an authorial persona) is contingent on success or failure in possessing the things it desires-and upon which its social identity and personal happiness depend. Drawing on a diverse selection of contrasting canonical works ranging from the "Iliad" to the biblical book of Joshua to High Medieval German political texts to the writings of Leibniz and Mark Twain, Hasty enables an appreciation of the distinctive contributions made in antiquity and the Middle Ages to the medieval emergence of a European society based on risks and rewards. "The Medieval Risk-Reward Society: Courts, Adventure, and Love in the European Middle Ages" takes a descriptive approach to the competitions in religion, politics, and poetry that are constitutive of medieval culture. Culture is considered always to be "happening, " and to be happening on the cultural cutting edge as competitions for rewards involving the element of chance. This study finds adventure and love--the principal concerns of medieval European romance poetry--to be cultural game changers, and thereby endeavors to make a humanist contribution to the development of a cultural game theory. Will Hasty is Professor of German and Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Florida, Gainesville."

Who can concentrate on thoughts of Scripture or philosophy and be able to endure babies crying … ? Will he put up with the constant muddle and squalor which small children bring into the home? The wealthy can do so … but philosophers lead a very different life … So, according to Peter Abelard, did his wife Heloise state in characteristically stark terms the antithetical demands of family and scholarship. Heloise was not alone in making this assumption. Sources from Jerome onward never cease to remind us that the life of the mind stands at odds with life in the family. For all that we have moved in the past two generations beyond kings and battles, fiefs and barons, motherhood has remained a blind spot for medieval historians. Whatever the reasons, the result is that the historiography of the medieval period is largely motherless. The aim of this book is to insist that this picture is intolerably one-dimensional, and to begin to change it. The volume is focussed on the paradox of motherhood in the European Middle Ages: to be a mother is at once to hold great power, and by the same token to be acutely vulnerable. The essays look to analyse the powers and the dangers of motherhood within the warp and weft of social history, beginning with the premise that religious discourse or practice served as a medium in which mothers (and others) could assess their situation, defend claims, and make accusations. Within this frame, three main themes emerge: survival, agency, and institutionalization. The volume spans the length and breadth of the Middle Ages, from late Roman North Africa through ninth-century Byzantium to late medieval Somerset, drawing in a range of types of historian, including textual scholars, literary critics, students of religion and economic historians. The unity of the volume arises from the very diversity of approaches within it, all addressed to the central topic.

In Culture and Society in Medieval Galicia, twenty-three international authors examine Galicia’s changing place in Iberia, Europe, and the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds from late antiquity through the thirteenth century. With articles on art and architecture; religion and the church; law and society; politics and historiography; language and literature; and learning and textual culture, the authors introduce medieval Galicia and current research on the region to medievalists, Hispanists, and students of regional culture and society. The cult of St. James, Santiago Cathedral, and the pilgrimage to Compostela are highlighted and contextualized to show how Galicia’s remoteness became the basis for a paradoxical centrality in medieval art, culture, and religion. Contributors are Jeffrey A. Bowman, Manuel Castiñeiras, James D'Emilio, Thomas Deswarte, Pablo C. Díaz, Emma Falque, Amélia P. Hutchinson, Amancio Isla, Henrik Karge, Melissa R. Katz, Michael Kulikowski, Fernando López Sánchez, Luis R. Menéndez Bueyes, William D. Paden, Francisco Javier Pérez Rodríguez, Ermelindo Portela, Rocío Sánchez Ameijeiras, Adeline Rucquoi, Ana Suárez González, Purificación Ubric, Ramón Villares, John Williams †, and Roger Wright.

In this fascinating study, Schmitt examines the significance of the widespread belief in ghosts during the Middle Ages and traces the imaginative, political, and religious contexts of these everyday haunts. Ghosts were pitiful or terrifying, usually solitary, creatures who arose from their tombs to haunt their friends and relatives. Including numerous color illustrations of ghosts and their trappings, this book presents a unique and intriguing look at medieval culture. 28 color plates.

Gender in Medieval Culture provides a detailed examination of medieval society's views on both gender and sexuality, and shows how they are inextricably linked. Sex roles were clearly defined in the medieval world although there were exceptions to the rules, and this book examines both the commonplace world view and the exceptions to it. The volume looks not only at the social and economic considerations of gender but also the religious and legal implications, arguing that both ecclesiastical and secular laws governed behaviour. The book covers key topics, including femininity and masculinity and how medieval society constructed these terms; sexuality and sex; transgressive sexualities such as homosexuality, adultery and chastity; and the gendered body of Christ, including the idea of Jesus as mother and affective spirituality. Using a clear chapter structure for easy navigation and categorisation, as well as a glossary of terms, the book will be a vital resource for students of medieval history.

This study investigates the place of the royal court and the operation of patronage in several European kingdoms in the early Middle Ages. It seeks to identify the roots of later medieval developments, and especially of the Carolingian Renaissance, in the centuries immediately succeeding the period of Roman rule.