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Minstrels and Minstrelsy in Late Medieval England (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R3,046
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Minstrels and Minstrelsy in Late Medieval England (Hardcover)
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A major new study piecing together the intriguing but fragmentary
evidence surrounding the lives of minstrels to highlight how these
seemingly peripheral figures were keenly involved with all aspects
of late medieval communities. Minstrels were a common sight and
sound in the late Middle Ages. Aristocrats, knights and ladies
heard them on great occasions (such as Edward I's wedding feast for
his daughter Elizabeth in 1296) and in quieter moments in their
chambers; town-dwellers heard and saw them in civic processions
(when their sound drew attention to the spectacle); and even in the
countryside people heard them at weddings, church-ales and other
parish celebrations. But who were the minstrels, and what did they
do? How did they live, and how easily did they make a living? How
did they perform, and in what conditions? The evidence is
intriguing but fragmentary, including literary and iconographic
sources and, most importantly, the financial records of royal and
aristocratic households and of towns. These offer many insights,
although they are often hard to fit into any coherent picture of
the minstrels' lives and their place in society. It is easy to see
the minstrels as peripheral figures, entertainers who had no
central place in the medieval world. Yet they were full members of
it, interacting with the ordinary people around them, as well as
with the ruling classes: carrying letters and important verbal
messages, some lending huge sums of money to the king (to finance
Henry V's Agincourt campaign in 1415, for instance), some regular
and necessary civic servants, some committing crimes or suffering
the crimes of others. In this book Rastall and Taylor bring to bear
the available evidence to enlarge and enrich our view of the
minstrel in late medieval society.
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