This book aims to further a debate about aspects of "playing" and "gaming" in connection with history. Reaching out to academics, professionals and students alike, it pursues a dedicated interdisciplinary approach. Rather than only focusing on how professionals could learn from academics in history, the book also ponders the question of what academics can learn from gaming and playing for their own practice, such as gamification for teaching, or using "play" as a paradigm for novel approaches into historical scholarship. "Playing" and "gaming" are thus understood as a broad cultural phenomenon that cross-pollinates the theory and practice of history and gaming alike.

This volume presents the first substantial exploration of crusading and masculinity, focusing on the varied ways in which the symbiotic relationship between the two was made manifest in a range of medieval settings and sources, and to what ends. Ideas about masculinity formed an inherent part of the mindset of societies in which crusading happened, and of the conceptual framework informing both those who recorded the events and those who participated. Examination and interrogation of these ideas enables a better contextualised analysis of how those events were experienced, comprehended and portrayed. The collection is structured around five themes: sources and models; contrasting masculinities; emasculation and transgression; masculinity and religiosity and kingship and chivalry. By incorporating masculinity within their analysis of the crusades and of crusaders the contributors demonstrate how such approaches greatly enhance our understanding of crusading as an ideal, an institution and an experience. Individual essays consider western campaigns to the Middle East and Islamic responses; events and sources from the Iberian peninsula and Prussia are also interrogated and re-examined, thus enabling cross-cultural comparison of the meanings attached to medieval manhood. The collection also highlights the value of employing gender as a vital means of assessing relationships between different groups of men, whose values and standards of behaviour were socially and culturally constructed in distinct ways.

Essays offering new approaches to the changing forms of medieval religious masculinity. The complex relationship between masculinity and religion, as experienced in both the secular and ecclesiastical worlds, forms the focus for this volume, whose range encompasses the rabbis of the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmud,and moves via Carolingian and Norman France, Siena, Antioch, and high and late medieval England to the eve of the Reformation. Chapters investigate the creation and reconstitution of different expressions of masculine identity, from the clerical enthusiasts for marriage to the lay practitioners of chastity, from crusading bishops to holy kings. They also consider the extent to which lay and clerical understandings of masculinity existed in an unstable dialectical relationship, at times sharing similar features, at others pointedly different, co-opting and rejecting features of the other; the articles show this interplay to be more far more complicated than a simple linear narrative of either increasing divergence, or of clerical colonization of lay masculinity. They also challenge conventional historiographies of the adoption of clerical celibacy, of the decline of monasticism and the gendered nature of piety. Patricia Cullum is Head of History at the University of Huddersfield; Katherine J. Lewis is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield. Contributors: James G. Clark, P.H. Cullum, Kirsten A. Fenton, Joanna Huntington, Katherine J. Lewis, Matthew Mesley, Catherine Sanok, Michael L. Satlow, Rachel Stone, Jennifer D. Thibodeaux, Marita von Weissenberg

This book aims to further a debate about aspects of "playing" and "gaming" in connection with history. Reaching out to academics, professionals and students alike, it pursues a dedicated interdisciplinary approach. Rather than only focusing on how professionals could learn from academics in history, the book also ponders the question of what academics can learn from gaming and playing for their own practice, such as gamification for teaching, or using "play" as a paradigm for novel approaches into historical scholarship. "Playing" and "gaming" are thus understood as a broad cultural phenomenon that cross-pollinates the theory and practice of history and gaming alike.

Essays offering new approaches to the changing forms of medieval religious masculinity. The complex relationship between masculinity and religion, as experienced in both the secular and ecclesiastical worlds, forms the focus for this volume, whose range encompasses the rabbis of the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmud,and moves via Carolingian and Norman France, Siena, Antioch, and high and late medieval England to the eve of the Reformation. Chapters investigate the creation and reconstitution of different expressions of masculine identity, from the clerical enthusiasts for marriage to the lay practitioners of chastity, from crusading bishops to holy kings. They also consider the extent to which lay and clerical understandings of masculinity existed in an unstable dialectical relationship, at times sharing similar features, at others pointedly different, co-opting and rejecting features of the other; the articles show this interplay to be more far more complicated than a simple linear narrative of either increasing divergence, or of clerical colonization of lay masculinity. They also challenge conventional historiographies of the adoption of clerical celibacy, of the decline of monasticism and the gendered nature of piety. P.H. CULLUM is Student Experience Co-ordinator for Music, Humanities and Media at the University of Huddersfield; KATHERINE J. LEWIS is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield. Contributors: James G. Clark, P.H. Cullum, Kirsten A. Fenton, Joanna Huntington, Katherine J. Lewis, Matthew Mesley, Catherine Sanok, Michael L. Satlow, Rachel Stone, Jennifer D. Thibodeaux, Marita von Weissenberg

John Gower's poetry offers an important and immediate response to the turbulent events of his day. The essays here examine his life and his works from an historical angle, bringing out fresh new insights. The late fourteenth century was the age of the Black Death, the Peasants' Revolt, the Hundred Years War, the deposition of Richard II, the papal schism and the emergence of the heretical doctrines of John Wyclif and the Lollards. These social, political and religious crises and conflicts were addressed not only by preachers and by those involved in public affairs but also by poets, including Chaucer and Langland. Above all, though, it is in the verse of John Gower that we find the most direct engagement with contemporary events. Yet, surprisingly, few historians have examined Gower's responses to these events or have studied the broader moral and philosophical outlook which he used to make sense of them. Here, a number of eminent medievalists seek to demonstrate what historians can add to our understanding of Gower's poetry and his ideas about society (the nobility and chivalry, the peasants and the 1381 revolt, urban life and the law), the Church (the clergy, papacy, Lollardy, monasticism, and the friars) gender (masculinity and women and power), politics (political theory and the deposition of Richard II) and science and astronomy. The book also offers an important reassessment of Gower's biography based on newly-discovered primary sources. STEPHEN RIGBY is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Social and Economic History at the University of Manchester; SIAN ECHARD is Professor of English, University of British Columbia. Contributors: Mark Bailey, Michael Bennett, Martha Carlin, James Davis, Seb Falk, Christopher Fletcher, David Green, David Lepine, Martin Heale, Katherine Lewis, Anthony Musson, Stephen Rigby, Jens Roehrkasten.

Margery Kempe and her Book studied in both literary and historical context. Margery Kempe's Book provides rare access to the "marginal voice" of a lay medieval woman, and is now the focus of much critical study. This Companion seeks to complement the existing almost exclusively literary scholarship with work that also draws significantly on historical analysis, and is concerned to contextualise Kempe's Book in a number of different ways, using her work as a way in to the culture and society of medieval northern Europe. Topics include images and pilgrimage; women, work and trade in medieval Norfolk; political culture and heresy; the prophetic tradition; female mystics and the body; women's roles and lifecycle; religious drama and reenactment; autobiography and gender. Contributors: JOHN H. ARNOLD, P.H. CULLUM, ISABEL DAVIS, ALLYSON FOSTER, JACQUELINE JENKINS, KATHERINE J. LEWIS, KATE PARKER, KIM M. PHILLIPS, SARAH SALIH, CLAIRE SPONSLER, DIANE WATT,BARRY WINDEATT.

The Saints' Life was one of the most popular forms of literature in medieval England. This volume offers crucial information for an understanding of the genre. The saints were the superheroes and the celebrities of medieval England, bridging the gap between heaven and earth, the living and the dead. A vast body of literature evolved during the middle ages to ensure that everyone, from kings to peasants, knew the stories of the lives, deaths and afterlives of the saints. However, despite its popularity and ubiquity, the genre of the Saint's Life has until recently been little studied. This collection introduces the canon of Middle English hagiography; places it in the context of the cults of saints; analyses key themes within hagiographic narrative, including gender, power, violence and history; and, finally, shows how hagiographic themessurvived the Reformation. Overall it offers both information for those coming to the genre for the first time, and points forward to new trends in research. Dr SARAH SALIH is Senior Lecturer in English, King's College London. Contributors: SAMANTHA RICHES, MARY BETH LONG, CLAIRE M. WATERS, ROBERT MILLS, ANKE BERNAU, KATHERINE J. LEWIS, MATTHEW WOODCOCK

The history and underlying ideology of pilgrimage examined, from prehistory to the middle ages. The enduring importance of pilgrimage as an expression of human longing is explored in this volume through three major themes: the antiquity of pilgrimage in what became the Christian world; the mechanisms of Christian pilgrimage(particularly in relation to the practicalities of the journey and the workings of the shrine); and the fluidity and adaptability of pilgrimage ideology. In their examination of pilgrimage as part of western culture from neolithictimes onwards, the authors make use of a range of approaches, often combining evidence from a number of sources, including anthropology, archaeology, history, folklore, margin illustrations and wall paintings; they suggest that it is the fluidity of pilgrimage ideology, combined with an adherence to supposedly traditional physical observances, which has succeeded in maintaining its relevance and retaining its identity. They also look at the ways in whichpilgrimage spilled into, or rather was part of, secular life in the middle ages. Dr JENNIE STOPFORD teaches in the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York. Contributors: RICHARD BRADLEY, E.D. HUNT, JULIEANN SMITH, SIMON BARTON, WENDY R. CHILDS, BEN NILSON, KATHERINE J. LEWIS, DEBRA J. BIRCH, SIMON COLEMAN, JOHN ELSNER, A. M. KOLDEWEIJ.

First large-scale study of widespread saint's cult reveals valuable detail of medieval life. The cult of St Katherine of Alexandria enjoyed great popularity throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, retaining a wide appeal right up to the Reformation; she appears in a wide variety of contexts, in association withconcepts of royal and civic power, by the end of the period becoming identified as a British saint, and acting as a model of the ideal lay Christian and a paradigm of femininity and young womanhood. This study, the first full-scale interdisciplinary examination of a saint's cult in late medieval England, looks at the processes by which she came to have such a prominent place in the devotions of English men and women from across the wide social scale; using written and visual narratives of Katherine's life, in combination with documentary evidence provided by wills, inventories and gild returns, the author shows how devotees perceived and responded to her, and the various religious, social and cultural roles assigned to her. Dr KATHERINE J. LEWIS teaches at the University of Huddersfield.