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This collection of essays, whose title echoes that of her most
well-known book, celebrates the career of Barbara A. Hanawalt,
emerita George III Professor of British Studies at The Ohio State
University. The volume's contents -- ranging from politics to
family histories, from intimate portraits to extensive
prosopographies -- are authored by both former students and
career-long colleagues and friends, and reflect the wide range of
topics on which Professor Hanawalt has written as well as her
varied methodological approaches and disciplinary interests. The
essays also mirror the variety of sources Professor Hanawalt has
utilized in her work: public documents of the law courts and
chancery; private deeds, charters, and wills; works of both
religious and secular literature. The collection not only
illustrates and reinforces the influence of Barbara Hanawalt's work
on modern-day medieval studies, it is also a testament to her
inspiring friendship and guidance during a career that has now
spanned more than three decades.
The period covered by this volume, roughly 800-1450, was one of
enormous change in the way people lived in their houses. Medieval
people could call a grand castle, a humble thatched hut, or
anything in between home, but houses were more than physical
spaces. They changed according to technological developments,
climatic needs, geological limitations and economic resources. They
were also moral units that were themselves symbolic, economic,
gendered, and social. At the beginning of our period, the movement
of people, goods, and ideas, and the need for defense against some
of this movement had an impact on how and where people lived. The
codification of laws shaped how people understood the physical
integrity of their homes, the reception they should give to those
who wanted to enter, and their identification with the house
itself. As European economies expanded in the twelfth century,
householders increasingly had access to items that changed their
day-to-day lives within their houses. This volume argues that
through a house and its uses, occupants created, sustained, and
understood their relationship to each other and their society.
The Black Death that arrived in the spring of 1348 eventually
killed nearly half of England's population. In its long aftermath,
wages in London rose in response to labor shortages, many survivors
moved into larger quarters in the depopulated city, and people in
general spent more money on food, clothing, and household
furnishings than they had before. Household Goods and Good
Households in Late Medieval London looks at how this increased
consumption reconfigured long-held gender roles and changed the
domestic lives of London's merchants and artisans for years to
come. Grounding her analysis in both the study of surviving
household artifacts and extensive archival research, Katherine L.
French examines the accommodations that Londoners made to their
bigger houses and the increasing number of possessions these
contained. The changes in material circumstance reshaped domestic
hierarchies and produced new routines and expectations. Recognizing
that the greater number of possessions required a different kind of
management and care, French puts housework and gender at the center
of her study. Historically, the task of managing bodies and things
and the dirt and chaos they create has been unproblematically
defined as women's work. Housework, however, is neither timeless
nor ahistorical, and French traces a major shift in women's
household responsibilities to the arrival and gendering of new
possessions and the creation of new household spaces in the decades
after the plague.
The Good Women of the Parish Gender and Religion After the Black
Death Katherine L. French "Contains a wealth of interesting detail,
much of it culled from those churchwardens' account that had begun
to be kept in the fourteenth century. Women themselves might act as
churchwardens, but as French makes abundantly clear throughout her
book, such a role was only one among many that women in the late
English medieval parish might exercise. French may not with to
argue that the Reformation was 'bad' for women, but she does make
it clear that thereafter women had to learn--the phrase is
hers--quite a new 'vocabulary of piety.'"--"Journal of British
Studies" There was immense social and economic upheaval between the
Black Death and the English Reformation, and contemporary writers
often blamed this upheaval on immorality, singling out women's
behavior for particular censure. Late medieval moral treatises and
sermons increasingly connected good behavior for women with
Christianity, and their failure to conform to sin. Katherine L.
French argues, however, that medieval laywomen both coped with the
chaotic changes following the plague and justified their own
changing behavior by participating in local religion. Through
active engagement in the parish church, the basic unit of public
worship, women promoted and validated their own interests and
responsibilities. Scholarship on medieval women's religious
experiences has focused primarily on elite women, nuns, and mystics
who either were literate enough to leave written records of their
religious ideas and behavior or had access to literate men who did
this for them. Most women, however, were not literate, were not
members of religious orders, and did not have private confessors.
As "The Good Women of the Parish" shows, the great majority of
women practiced their religion in a parish church. By looking at
women's contributions to parish maintenance, the ways they shaped
the liturgy and church seating arrangements, and their increasing
opportunities for collective action in all-women's groups, the book
argues that gendered behavior was central to parish life and that
women's parish activities gave them increasing visibility and even,
on occasion, authority. In the face of demands for silence,
modesty, and passivity, women of every social status used religious
practices as an important source of self-expression, creativity,
and agency. Katherine L. French is Associate Professor of History,
State University of New York, New Paltz. She is the author of "The
People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval English
Diocese," also published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
The Middle Ages Series 2007 352 pages 6 x 9 19 illus. ISBN
978-0-8122-4053-5 Cloth $69.95s 45.50 ISBN 978-0-8122-0196-3 Ebook
$69.95s 45.50 World Rights History, Women's/Gender Studies,
Religion Short copy: French argues that medieval laywomen both
coped with the chaotic changes following the plague and justified
their own changing behavior by participating in local religion.
Through active engagement in the parish church, the basic unit of
public worship, women promoted and validated their own interests
and responsibilities.
The period covered by this volume, roughly 800-1450, was one of
enormous change in the way people lived in their houses. Medieval
people could call a grand castle, a humble thatched hut, or
anything in between home, but houses were more than physical
spaces. They changed according to technological developments,
climatic needs, geological limitations and economic resources. They
were also moral units that were themselves symbolic, economic,
gendered, and social. At the beginning of our period, the movement
of people, goods, and ideas, and the need for defense against some
of this movement had an impact on how and where people lived. The
codification of laws shaped how people understood the physical
integrity of their homes, the reception they should give to those
who wanted to enter, and their identification with the house
itself. As European economies expanded in the twelfth century,
householders increasingly had access to items that changed their
day-to-day lives within their houses. This volume argues that
through a house and its uses, occupants created, sustained, and
understood their relationship to each other and their society.
The People of the Parish Community Life in a Late Medieval English
Diocese Katherine L. French "Meticulously researched and
erudite."--"The Historian" "A coherent, well-written, and
stimulating survey of parish life."--"Catholic Historical Review"
"By integrating issues of literacy and gender, and considering the
tensions as well as cohesion, this book adds a significant
contribution to the developing understanding of the role of the
parish in late medieval English religious and social life."--Robert
Swanson, University of Birmingham "Katherine French puts a human
face on the history of the English medieval parish between the end
of the fourteenth century and the Reformation."--Carol
Davidson-Cragoe, "The Medieval Review" The parish, the lowest level
of hierarchy in the medieval church, was the shared responsibility
of the laity and the clergy. Most Christians were baptized, went to
confession, were married, and were buried in the parish church or
churchyard; in addition, business, legal settlements, sociability,
and entertainment brought people to the church, uniting secular and
sacred concerns. In "The People of the Parish," Katherine L. French
contends that late medieval religion was participatory and
flexible, promoting different kinds of spiritual and material
involvement. The rich parish records of the small diocese of Bath
and Wells include wills, court records, and detailed accounts by
lay churchwardens of everyday parish activities. They reveal the
differences between parishes within a single diocese that cannot be
attributed to regional variation. By using these records show to
the range and diversity of late medieval parish life, and a
Christianity vibrant enough to accommodate differences in status,
wealth, gender, and local priorities, French refines our
understanding of lay attitudes toward Christianity in the two
centuries before the Reformation. Katherine L. French is Associate
Professor of History at the State University of New York, New
Paltz. The Middle Ages Series 2000 320 pages 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 9 illus.
ISBN 978-0-8122-3581-4 Cloth $75.00s 49.00 World Rights History,
Religion Short copy: "Katherine French puts a human face on the
history of the English medieval parish between the end of the
fourteenth century and the Reformation."--Carol Davidson-Cragoe,
"TMR"
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