What did it mean to be a man in medieval England? Most would answer this question by alluding to the power and status men enjoyed in a patriarchal society, or they might refer to iconic images of chivalrous knights. While these popular ideas do have their roots in the history of the aristocracy, the experience of ordinary men was far more complicated.
Through close readings of both familiar and obscure medieval texts, the contributors to this volume attempt to read England as a singularly powerful entity within a vast geopolitical network. This capacious world can be glimpsed in the cultural flows connecting the Normans of Sicily with the rulers of England, or Chaucer with legends arriving from Bohemia. It can also be seen in surprising places in literature, as when green children are discovered in twelfth-century Yorkshire or when Welsh animals begin to speak of the long history of their land’s colonization.
The histories of England and of Normandy in the middle ages were inextricably linked. England and Normandy in the Middle Ages provides a synoptic view by leading scholars of not only political and military but also of ecclesiastical and cultural links. Taken together these essays provide an up-to-date scholarly account of relations between England and its immediate neighbour.
Gender and Petty Crime in Late Medieval England - The Local Courts in Kent 1460 - 1560
A large proportion of late medieval people were accused of some kind of misdemeanour in borough, manorial or ecclesiastical courts at some stage in their lives. The records of these courts bring us as close to ordinary townspeople and villagers as it is possible to get, and show what behaviour was considered reprehensible in men and women.
Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England
In the first general survey of political prophecy in medieval England for almost a hundred years, Lesley Coote examines the nature of political prophecy, its audience and its reception, from its emergence in the twelfth century to the end of the Middle Ages. Working from original manuscripts, she reveals prophecy to have been a major language for the discussion of public affairs, enshrining ideas of `Englishness' and a `national' community, and introducing a great crusading hero-ruler, a second Arthur, who would lead his people into the Last Days.
