Book List Updates, October 30, 2018
Here are this week’s “oooh” items for the Book List, thanks to The Medieval Magazine:
Medieval Sensibilities: A History of Emotions in the Middle Ages, By Damien Boquet and Piroska Nagy, translated by Robert Shaw
Polity Press, ISBN: 978-1-5095-1465-6
Excerpt: What were the emotional consequences of the Christianization of Europe? In Medieval Sensibilities, Damien Boquet and Piroska Nagy bring to the English-speaking audience the fruits of their long reflection on this question. They show how, far from being a stagnant ‘Middle Age’ standing between the learned ancient world and the discontented modernity, the period was in constant affective ferment. Social and economic changes in themselves brought new sensibilities and needs. These new milieus, drawing on and filtering, but also adding to, the many intellectual traditions increasingly available to an expanding clerical elite, transformed their thoughts about Christ’s Passion. In turn, these new understandings, taught in the schools, proclaimed in the churches, preached on the streets, and acted out by rulers, transformed the feelings and behaviours of Europeans in general.
Also:
Portraits of Medieval Eastern Europe, 900-1400, Edited by Donald Ostroski and Christian Raffensperger
Routledge, ISBN: 978-1-138-70120-5
Publisher’s Overview: Portraits of Medieval Eastern Europe provides imagined biographies of twenty different figures from all walks of life living in Eastern Europe from 900 to 1400. Moving beyond the usual boundaries of speculative history, the book presents innovative and creative interpretations of the people, places, and events of medieval Eastern Europe and provides an insight into medieval life from Scandinavia to Byzantium.
Each chapter explores a different figure and together they present snapshots of life across a wide range of different social backgrounds. Among the figures are both imagined and historical characters, including the Byzantine Princess Anna Porphyrogenita, a Jewish traveller, a slave, the Mongol general Sübodei, a woman from Novgorod, and a Rus’ pilgrim. A range of different narrative styles are also used throughout the book, from omniscient third-person narrators to diary entries, letters, and travel accounts.
And, lastly (oh, who am I kidding—there is no “last” on the book list):
The Cambridge History of Ireland, Volume 1: 600-1550, Edited by Brendan Smith
Cambridge University Press, ISBN:978-107-11067-0
The thousand years explored in this book witnessed developments in the history of Ireland that resonate to this day. Interspersing narrative with detailed analysis of key themes, the first volume in The Cambridge History of Ireland presents the latest thinking on key aspects of the medieval Irish experience. The contributors are leading experts in their fields, and present their original interpretations in a fresh and accessible manner. New perspectives are offered on the politics, artistic culture, religious beliefs and practices, social organisation and economic activity that prevailed on the island in these centuries. At each turn the question is asked: to what extent were these developments unique to Ireland? The openness of Ireland to outside influences, and its capacity to influence the world beyond its shores, are recurring themes. Underpinning the book is a comparative, outward-looking approach that sees Ireland as an integral but exceptional component of medieval Christian Europe.
*Places the Irish experience in the broader context of medieval European developments, allowing for comparisons and contrasts with other countries to emerge
*Contains new and original perspectives from the leading scholars in the field
*Written in an accessible style and supported by full scholarly apparatus and carefully selected maps, tables and illustrations
