A comprehensive introduction to medieval England surveying the years from the departure of the Roman legions to the Battle of Bosworth.

'The individual chapters are scholarly and up to the minute, without loss of accessibility or pace. The illustrations are many, apposite and refreshingly unhackneyed.' -Times Literary Supplement

This book provides a boldly original account of Middle English literature from the Norman Conquest to the beginning of the sixteenth century. It argues that these centuries are, in fundamental ways, the momentous period in our literary history, for they are the long moment in which the category of literature itself emerged as English writing began to insist, for the first time, that it floated free of any social reality or function. This book also charts the complex mechanisms by which English writing acquired this power in a series of linked close readings of both canonical and more obscure texts. It encloses those readings in five compelling accounts of much broader cultural areas, describing, in particular, the productive relationship of Middle English writing to medieval technology, insurgency, statecraft and cultural place, concluding with an in depth account of the particular arguments, emphases and techniques English writers used to claim a wholly new jurisdiction for their work. Both this history and its readings are everywhere informed by the most exciting developments in recent Middle English scholarship as well as literary and cultural theory. It serves as an introduction to all these areas as well as a contribution, in its own right, to each of them.

'the volume will indeed be a treasury for pictorial sources, and the illustrations to more off-the-beaten-track chapters (especially Noonan's, on European Russia) are correspondingly unusual.' -Guy Halsall, War in History, 8, 3, 2001'the truest picture yet of the Vikings and their age.' -Publishing News

A thorough and well-illustrated history with eight long essays by leading scholars which cover the history and culture of England, rather than the British Isles, from the 5th to the 15th century. Contents: Medieval England - Identity, Politics and Society ( Nigel Saul ); Anglo-Saxon England ( Janet L Nelson ); Conquered England ( George Garnett ); Late Medieval England 1215-1485 ( Chris Given-Wilson ); Economy and Society ( Christopher Dyer ); Piety, Religion and the Church ( Henrietta Leyser ); The Visual Arts ( Nicola Coldstream ); Language and Literature ( Derek Pearsall ).

Beginning with the merger of Roman, Christian, and Germanic cultures, this history of the Middle Ages covers a vast array of subjects, including Byzantium and the Islamic world, feudalism, the Crusades, the Magna Carta, and much more. Author Barbara A. Hanawalt uses a lively and anecdotal writing style to breathe life into earlier times. 35 color and 120 b & w illustrations. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

The Oxford Illustrated History of the Reformation is the story of one of the truly epochal events in world history -- and how it helped create the world we live in today

A scholarly look at 4,500 years of theater, beginning with its Greek origins and concluding with a study of theater since 1970.

Covering a thousand years of history, this volume tells the story of the creation of Western civilization in Europe and the Mediterranean. Now available in a compact, more convenient format, it offers the same text and many of the illustrations which first appeared in the widely acclaimed Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe. Written by expert scholars and based on the latest research, the book explores a period of profound diversity and change, focusing on all aspects of medieval history from the empires and kingdoms of Charlemagne and the Byzantines to the new nations which fought the Hundred Years War. The Oxford History of the Medieval World also examines such intriguing cultural subjects as the chivalric code of knights, popular festivals, and the proliferation of new art forms, and the catastrophic social effect of the Black Death.

The story of the 'long Renaissance' for a new generation from Giotto and Dante in thirteenth-century Italy to the English literary Renaissance in the first half of the seventeenth century.