Inventing The Middle Ages

The Middle Ages, in our cultural imagination, are besieged with ideas of wars, tournaments, plagues, saints and kings, knights, lords and ladies. In his era-defining work, Inventing the Middle Ages, Norman Cantor shows that these presuppositions are in fact constructs of the twentieth century. Through close study of the lives and works of twenty of the twentieth century's most prominent medievalists, Cantor examines how the genesis of this fantasy arose in the scholars' spiritual and emotional outlooks, which influenced their portrayals of the Middle Ages. In the course of this vigorous scrutiny of their scholarship, he navigates the strong personalities and creative minds involved with deft skill. Written with both students and the general public in mind, Inventing the Middle Ages provided an alternative framework for the teaching of the humanities. Revealing the interconnection between medieval civilisation, the culture of the twentieth century and our own assumptions, Cantor provides a unique standpoint both forwards and backwards. As lively and engaging today as when it was first published in 1991, his analysis offers readers the core essentials of the subject in an entertaining and humorous fashion.

The Middle Ages, in our cultural imagination, are besieged with ideas of wars, tournaments, plagues, saints and kings, knights, lords and ladies. In his era-defining work, Inventing the Middle Ages, Norman Cantor shows that these presuppositions are in fact constructs of the twentieth century. Through close study of the lives and works of twenty of the twentieth century’s most prominent medievalists, Cantor examines how the genesis of this fantasy arose in the scholars’ spiritual and emotional outlooks, which influenced their portrayals of the Middle Ages. In the course of this vigorous scrutiny of their scholarship, he navigates the strong personalities and creative minds involved with deft skill. Written with both students and the general public in mind, Inventing the Middle Ages provided an alternative framework for the teaching of the humanities. Revealing the interconnection between medieval civilisation, the culture of the twentieth century and our own assumptions, Cantor provides a unique standpoint both forwards and backwards. As lively and engaging today as when it was first published in 1991, his analysis offers readers the core essentials of the subject in an entertaining and humorous fashion.

This book challenges the common belief that race and racisms are phenomena that began only in the modern era.

One of the most challenging problems in the history of Western ideas stems from the emergence of Modernity out of the preceding period of the Latin Middle Ages. This volume develops and extends the insights of the noted scholar Thomas M. Izbicki into the so-called medieval/modern divide. The contributors include a wide array of eminent international scholars from the fields of History, Theology, Philosophy, and Political Science, all of whom explore how medieval ideas framed and shaped the thought of later centuries. This sometimes involved the evolution of intellectual principles associated with the definition and imposition of religious orthodoxy. Also addressed is the Great Schism in the Roman Church that set into question the foundations of ecclesiology. In the same era, philosophical and theoretical innovations reexamined conventional beliefs about metaphysics, epistemology and political life, perhaps best encapsulated by the fifteenth-century philosopher, theologian and political theorist Nicholas of Cusa.

The Black Death was the fourteenth century's equivalent of a nuclear war. It wiped out one-third of Europe's population, taking millions of lives. The author draws together the most recent scientific discoveries and historical research to pierce the mist and tell the story of the Black Death as a gripping, intimate narrative.

The eleven essays in this volume offer diverse approaches to very different landscapes. Yet they agree in viewing medieval western European landscape as artifact, as territiry constructed by medieval people on several interrelated levels. By helping to articulate how places came to be managed, created, and imagined, they offer their readers a much better apprecitaion of what might be called a "deep ecology" of the Middle Ages. --introd.

The modern state, however we conceive of it today, is based on a pattern that emerged in Europe in the period from 1100 to 1600. Inspired by a lifetime of teaching and research, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State is a classic work on what is known about the early history of the European state. This short, clear book book explores the European state in its infancy, especially in institutional developments in the administration of justice and finance. Forewords from Charles Tilly and William Chester Jordan demonstrate the perennial importance of Joseph Strayer's book, and situate it within a contemporary context. Tilly demonstrates how Strayer’s work has set the agenda for a whole generation of historical analysts, not only in medieval history but also in the comparative study of state formation. William Chester Jordan's foreword examines the scholarly and pedagogical setting within which Strayer produced his book, and how this both enhanced its accessibility and informed its focus on peculiarly English and French accomplishments in early state formation.