[books 2015] Late Medieval History
Mar. 17th, 2015 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulro13. England, Arise: The People, the King and the Great Revolt of 1381 by Juliet Barker
What am I doing reading about the late medieval period when my interests have been creeping steadily back to the migration age, you may ask. Barker was pimping it out on Start the Week a while ago and the library had it, so I thought why not?
She was convincing on the radio about how the term "peasants' revolt" is Wrong, and that's the kind of stuff I love. If you look past the chroniclers, who were all obviously terrified by the revolt, and into the records of the courts etc, what you find is a revolt by the people that would later become the middle class. It was far more organised and focussed in its aims than we (ie even those of us who've done this at undergraduate level) have been told.
The minutiae of the revolt weren't terribly interesting to me but the examination of what actually happened is incredibly important, and her examination of late medieval life in England was (a) a good refresher (hey, I only know *anything* about this in the first place because I did an extensive undergrad paper on the attitudes towards death in the middle ages especially in relation to the Black Death), and (b) made several important points that I had long suspected but didn't really have the tools to examine. The most important is that the level of literacy at the time has been grossly underestimated since, well, even then.
Not all of it is the most gripping read in the world, but essential stuff if you care at all about social history, the history of ideas, the history of labour movements and history that's contrary to what they taught you at school/university (apologies if universities aren't teaching it that way any more - my experience was a long time ago!)
What am I doing reading about the late medieval period when my interests have been creeping steadily back to the migration age, you may ask. Barker was pimping it out on Start the Week a while ago and the library had it, so I thought why not?
She was convincing on the radio about how the term "peasants' revolt" is Wrong, and that's the kind of stuff I love. If you look past the chroniclers, who were all obviously terrified by the revolt, and into the records of the courts etc, what you find is a revolt by the people that would later become the middle class. It was far more organised and focussed in its aims than we (ie even those of us who've done this at undergraduate level) have been told.
The minutiae of the revolt weren't terribly interesting to me but the examination of what actually happened is incredibly important, and her examination of late medieval life in England was (a) a good refresher (hey, I only know *anything* about this in the first place because I did an extensive undergrad paper on the attitudes towards death in the middle ages especially in relation to the Black Death), and (b) made several important points that I had long suspected but didn't really have the tools to examine. The most important is that the level of literacy at the time has been grossly underestimated since, well, even then.
Not all of it is the most gripping read in the world, but essential stuff if you care at all about social history, the history of ideas, the history of labour movements and history that's contrary to what they taught you at school/university (apologies if universities aren't teaching it that way any more - my experience was a long time ago!)
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Date: 2015-03-18 04:23 am (UTC)