Romance And The Gentry In Late Medieval England

Download or read book Romance and the Gentry in Late Medieval England written by Michael Johnston and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-06-19 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Romance and the Gentry in Late Medieval England offers a new history of Middle English romance, the most popular genre of secular literature in the English Middle Ages. Michael Johnston argues that many of the romances composed in England from 1350-1500 arose in response to the specific socio-economic concerns of the gentry, the class of English landowners who lacked titles of nobility and hence occupied the lower rungs of the aristocracy. The end of the fourteenth century in England witnessed power devolving to the gentry, who became one of the dominant political and economic forces in provincial society. As Johnston demonstrates, this social change also affected England's literary culture, particularly the composition and readership of romance. Romance and the Gentry in Late Medieval England identifies a series of new topoi in Middle English that responded to the gentry's economic interests. But beyond social history and literary criticism, it also speaks to manuscript studies, showing that most of the codices of the "gentry romances" were produced by those in the immediate employ of the gentry. By bringing together literary criticism and manuscript studies, this book speaks to two scholarly communities often insulated from one another: it invites manuscript scholars to pay closer attention to the cultural resonances of the texts within medieval codices; simultaneously, it encourages literary scholars to be more attentive to the cultural resonances of surviving medieval codices.

Download or read book Romance and the Gentry in Late Medieval England written by Michael Johnston and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014-05 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: showing that contrary to the commonly held view that romances are representative of the "popular culture" of their day, in fact such texts appealed primarily to the gentry, England's elite landowners who lacked titles of nobility.

Download or read book Gentry Culture in Late-Medieval England written by Raluca Radulescu and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays in this collection examine the lifestyles and attitudes of the gentry in late-medieval England. Through surveys of the gentry's military background, administrative and political roles, social behavior, and education, the reader is provided with an overview of how the group's culture evolved and how it was disseminated.

Download or read book The Great Household in Late Medieval England written by C. M. Woolgar and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the later medieval centuries, a whole range of important social, political and artistic activities took place against the backdrop of the great English households. In this vividly illuminating book, C. M. Woolgar explores the details of life in these great houses. Based on an extensive investigation of household accounts and related primary documents, he examines the daily routines, the weekly and annual patterns, and the life-cycle observances of birth, childhood, marriage, death and burial. He also delineates the major changes that transformed the economy and geography of both lay and clerical households between 1200 and 1500.

Download or read book Poets and Scribes in Late Medieval England written by Michael Johnston and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-10-23 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Susanna Fein’s long and distinguished scholarly career has helped to redefine how we understand the role of scribes and manuscripts from late medieval England. She has carried out groundbreaking research on seminal manuscripts (e.g., Harley 2253, the Thornton Manuscripts, John Audley’s autograph manuscript, and the Auchinleck Manuscript). She has written extensively on the more complex and challenging metrical forms the period produced. And she has edited foundational primary texts and collections of essays. A wide range of scholars have been influenced by Fein’s work, many of whom present original research—much of it following trails first laid down by Fein—in this volume.

Download or read book Medieval Gentlewoman written by Ffiona Swabey and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Through an examination of Alice's "Household Book," and using other extant contemporary sources, the author has been able to illuminate the experiences of medieval women in general. The resulting work provides a vivid picture of life in the medieval household, examining marriage and widowhood, daily household and estate management, hospitality and entertainment, education, patronage, religious concerns and the private and public roles of medieval women of the estate-owning class."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Minstrels and Minstrelsy in Late Medieval England written by Richard Rastall and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2023-04-04 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new study piecing together the intriguing but fragmentary evidence surrounding the lives of minstrels to highlight how these seemingly peripheral figures were keenly involved with all aspects of late medieval communities. Minstrels were a common sight and sound in the late Middle Ages. Aristocrats, knights and ladies heard them on great occasions (such as Edward I's wedding feast for his daughter Elizabeth in 1296) and in quieter moments in their chambers; town-dwellers heard and saw them in civic processions (when their sound drew attention to the spectacle); and even in the countryside people heard them at weddings, church-ales and other parish celebrations. But who were the minstrels, and what did they do? How did they live, and how easily did they make a living? How did they perform, and in what conditions? The evidence is intriguing but fragmentary, including literary and iconographic sources and, most importantly, the financial records of royal and aristocratic households and of towns. These offer many insights, although they are often hard to fit into any coherent picture of the minstrels' lives and their place in society. It is easy to see the minstrels as peripheral figures, entertainers who had no central place in the medieval world. Yet they were full members of it, interacting with the ordinary people around them, as well as with the ruling classes: carrying letters and important verbal messages, some lending huge sums of money to the king (to finance Henry V's Agincourt campaign in 1415, for instance), some regular and necessary civic servants, some committing crimes or suffering the crimes of others. In this book Rastall and Taylor bring to bear the available evidence to enlarge and enrich our view of the minstrel in late medieval society.