Description
Book SynopsisThis radical study traces the transformation of ideas in western Europe during more than one thousand years between the fifth and sixteenth centuries.Kleinschmidt approaches the western European middle ages as a modern anthropologist would approach analysis of a remote culture. His objectives have something in common with Le Goff, as he seeks to identify with medieval society and culture without the encumbrance of later historical attitudes. This radical study traces the transformation of ideas in western Europe during more than one thousand years between the fifth and sixteenth centuries. Its central concern is to interpret and understand changing attitudes towards time, space, the human body, human and social relationships, productivity and distribution, travel, modes of thought, attitudes to the past, ageversus youth, war, faith, and social and political order. Illustrations and narrative work together in this book to present medieval culture as one shaped by the spoken word and the visual image. Drawing extensively from awide range of primary source material, the breadth and originality of Kleinschmidt's study will have an important influence on scholarly perception of the middle ages, as a period of continual change and continually changing attitudes. HARALD KLEINSCHMIDT teaches in the College of International Studies at the University of Tsukuba, Japan.
Trade ReviewGiven such a wide-ranging goal, his work tantalizes as much as it rewards... but he succeeds in subtly suggesting a great deal more than he covers explicitly. * CHOICE *
A study that manages to catch some of the ferment and excitement of an age undergoing a vast series of changes in all areas... The reader comes away with a new sense of the dynamics of a long period of history. It is not history unrolled for us like a Bayeux tapestry of fixed events, but history seized in all its dynamism. * MEDIUM AEVUM *
Table of ContentsGeneralities: experiences of time; conceptions of space; the body - modes of behaviour; groups; men and women. Action: production and distribution; war; thinking. Interaction: communication in a given present; commemorating the past - world historiography; the movements of individuals and groups. Images of order: the old and the young; rule and representation. Conclusion: change and changes.
