Where the Middle Ages Begin
The question I want to pose here concerns the form of archives that will be available to the historians of the early twenty-first century. Or put differently – what will be left behind of the contemporary present in lieu of paper for the future historians?
…both fought bitterly. But Guy knocked his adversary from his horse and kept him down easily with his lance as he was struggling to get up. Then his opponent, running nearer, ran Guy’s horse through with his sword, disemboweling it.
Hardyng, an ex-soldier and spy of Henry V, set about composing the work after he ‘retired’ to the Augustinian priory at South Kyme, Lincolnshire, in the 1440s or 1450s.
The object of this thesis is to inquire into some major aspects of the historiographical writing of war in France and Burgundy, from Henry V’s invasion of France in 1415 to the first wars of Italy.
Without discounting the contribution of oral traditions of storytelling to the Alexiad, the study favours the growing consensus that Anna was more reliant on written material, especially campaign dispatches and military memoirs.
I’m a big fan of Christopher Columbus. Not the man, the phenomenon.
How did the Anglo-Saxons think about history?
The aim of this paper is to explore the changing way in which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports events in northern Britain, beyond the Anglo-Saxon territories, in the hope of gaining a better understanding both of events in that region and, perhaps more interestingly, the way in which the Chronicle was constructed.
This article investigates the transmission and the transformation of Froissart’s Chroniques into the Wavrin compilation through a close reading of an episode in manuscript context.
I argue that while Maalouf brilliantly deconstructs the Western image of the Crusades as a heroic time by documenting the barbarity of the Crusaders without falling into the pitfall of simply inverting the terms of the dichotomy, the agenda driving his rewriting of this historical period leads him to partially repeat what his book is supposed to undo
While most books about Italy have been dedicated to tourist hubs like Milan, Florence, Rome, Sicily and Venice, Genoa with its rich history, rugged landscape, and tenacious residents, has been given only a passing mention.
This article examines the profound impact that the concept of pragmatic literacy has had on the research methodologies of medievalists. Particular attention is given to the insight it has afforded historians of political culture who seek to better understand the nature of political consciousness in this period.
I began work on this talk ready to vent against Curtius. I have resisted his hold on my thinking and on that of medievalists generally, but only after benefitting hugely from his great book.
As the most venerable of Anglophone historical periodicals, the English Historical Review has carried many new findings on Magna Carta. In what follows, I attempt a survey of this contribution.
Historians have tended to give more weight to sources such as governmental and legal records than to chronicles, not least because so many survive. They open up areas of history impossible to access through chronicles alone, and they also provide a much more precise and detailed political narrative.
There is perhaps no better medieval example of the phase ‘Truth is in the eye of the beholder’ than these two versions of the death of Simon de Montfort, the leader of the crusaders during the Albigensian Crusade.
The 3 papers featured here looked at the development of the civic identities of Florence, Genoa and Rome through art, architecture and foundation legends.
Historians have found the task of defining medieval chivalry to be an elusive task.
There is famous story about King Cnut and the waves. However, most people know do not know the original version.
The process of vilification of Richard III started at the end of the fifteenth century, when a well-planned policy of Tudor propaganda was set in motion by Henry VII himself, who commissioned a series of historiographical writings, mainly aiming at the solidification of the newly founded dynasty.
This essay outlines where the history of animals is now, and suggests where it and the historiographical issues raised by the inclusion of animals in a study of the past might go in the future.
Wallace was a flesh and blood man who had no idea that he would one day become a national hero of Scotland and an international legend; however, in the right time and in the right circumstances, normal becomes exceptional and exceptional becomes legendary.
Authors look back at the entirety of the reign and reach two common conclusions: 1) he was a neglectful and mostly-absent ruler of England, but 2) he attained spectacular success in war, which was, after all, his primary interest.
Today, the Crusade influence can be seen across the world in novels, movies, sport teams and even restaurants.
The Chronicle of the thirteenth-century Franciscan friar Salimbene de Adam is filled with an abundance of self-referential passages.
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