Synopses & Reviews
A look at the stories, memories and chronicles which provide the history of the medieval past Who was responsible for the preservation of medieval knowledge? How did people preserve their recollections and pass them along? Focuses on the historical value of oral and written traditions. "Medieval Memories" is concerned with the memories of medieval people. In the Middle Ages, as now, men and women collected stories about the past and handed them down to posterity. Who, exactly, was responsible for the preservation of knowledge about the past? How did people preserve their recollections and pass them on to the next generation? Did they write them down or did they hand then on orally? Many memories center in the aristocratic family or lineage while others are focussed on institutions such as monasteries or nunneries. The family and monastic contexts clearly illustrate that remembrance of the past was a task for men and women and that each sex had a specific gendered role. Memory also involves selection of what should and should not be remembered and its corollary, amnesia, therefore, requires scrutiny. Anchored in the present, memory casts a shadow on the future and thus prophecies form an important component of the cult of remembrance. For the first time in "Medieval Memories," tombstones, medieval encyclopedias and legal testimonies figure alongside moral guidebooks, miracle stories and chronicles as material for the gendered perceptions of the medieval past.
Synopsis
Who, exactly, was responsible for the preservation of knowledge about the past? How did people preserve their recollections and pass them on to the next generation? Did they write them down or did they hand then on orally? The book is concerned with the memories of medieval people. In the Middle Ages, as now, men and women collected stories about the past and handed them down to posterity. Many memories centre in the aristocratic family or lineage while others are focussed on institutions such as monasteries or nunneries. The family and monastic contexts clearly illustrate that remembrance of the past was a task for men and women and that each sex had a specific gendered role. Memory also involves selection of what should and should not be remembered and its corollary, amnesia, therefore, is discussed. Anchored in the present, memory casts a shadow on the future and thus prophecies form an important component of the cult of remembrance. For the first time in Medieval Memories, tombstones, medieval encyclopaedias and legal testimonies figure alongside moral guidebooks, miracle stories and chronicles as material for the gendered perceptions of the medieval past.
Table of Contents
Introduction : medieval memories /Elisabeth van Houts --Keeping it in the family : women and aristocratic memory, 700-1200 /Matthew Innes --Gender and memory in medieval Italy /Patricia Skinner --Men, women and miracles in Normandy, 1050-1150 /Kathleen Quirk --Sworn testimony and memory of the past in Brittany, c. 1100-1250 /Judith Everard --Memories of the marvellous in the Anglo-Norman realm /Carl Watkins --Gendered memories from Flanders /Renâee Nip --Nuns' memories or missing history in Alsace (c. 1200) : Herrad of Hohenbourg's Garden of delights /Fiona Griffiths --Images of royal and aristocratic burial in northern Spain, c. 950-c. 1250 /Rose Walker.