Groundbreaking surveys of the complex interrelationship between the languages of English and French in medieval Britain. With co-editors: CAROLYN COLLETTE, MARYANNE KOWALESKI, LINNE MOONEY, AD PUTTER, and DAVID TROTTER England was more widely and enduringly francophone in the Middle Ages than our now standard accounts of its history, culture and language allow. The French of England (also known as Anglo-Norman and Anglo-French) is the language of nearly a thousand literary texts, of much administration, and of many professions and occupations. English literary, linguistic and documentary history is deeply interwoven both with a continually evolving spectrum of Frenches used within and outside the realm, and cannot be fully grasped in isolation. The essays in this volume open up andbegin writing a new cultural history focussed on, but not confined to, the presence and interactions of francophone speakers, writers, readers, texts and documents in England from the eleventh to the later fifteenth centuries. They return us to a newly-alive, multi-vocal, complexly multi-cultural medieval England, in which the use of French and its interrelations with English and other languages involve many diverse groups of people. The volume's size testifies to the significance of England's francophone culture, while its chronological range shows the need for revision across the whole span of our existing narratives about medieval English linguistic and cultural history.. Contributors: HENRY BAINTON, MICHAEL BENNETT, JULIA BOFFEY, RICHARD BRITNELL, CAROLYN COLLETTE, GODFRIED CROENEN, HELEN DEEMING, STEPHANIE DOWNES, MARTHA DRIVER, MONICA H. GREEN, RICHARD INGHAM, REBECCA JUNE, MARYANNE KOWALESKI, PIERRE KUNSTMANN, FRANCOISE H. M. LE SAUX, SERGE LUSIGNAN, TIM WILLIAM MACHAN, JULIA MARVIN, BRIAN MERRILEES, RUTH NISSE, MARILYN OLIVA, W. MARK ORMROD, HEATHER PAGAN, LAURIE POSTLEWATE, JEAN-PASCAL POUZET, AD PUTTER, GEOFFRECTOR, DELBERT RUSSELL, THEA SUMMERFIELD, ANDREW TAYLOR, DAVID TROTTER, ELIZABETH M. TYLER, NICHOLAS WATSON, JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE, ROBERT F. YEAGER

What did 'home' mean to men and women in the period 1200-1500? This volume explores the many cultural, material and ideological dimensions of the concept of domesticity. Leading scholars examine not only the material cultures of domesticity, gender, and power relations within the household, but also how they were envisioned in texts, images, objects and architecture. Many of the essays argue that England witnessed the emergence of a distinctive bourgeois ideology of domesticity during the late Middle Ages. But the volume also contends that, although the world of the great lord was far removed from that of the artisan or peasant, these social groups all occupied physical structures that constituted homes in which people were drawn together by ties of kinship, service or neighbourliness. This pioneering study will appeal to scholars of medieval English society, literature and culture.

Essays on the complexity of multilingualism in medieval England. Professor Jocelyn Wogan-Browne's scholarship on the French of England - a term she indeed coined for the mix of linguistic, cultural, and political elements unique to the pluri-lingual situation of medieval England - is of immenseimportance to the field. The essays in this volume extend, honour and complement her path-breaking work. They consider exchanges between England and other parts of Britain, analysing how communication was effected where languagesdiffered, and probe cross-Channel relations from a new perspective. They also examine the play of features within single manuscripts, and with manuscripts in conversation with each other. And they discuss the continuing reach ofthe French of England beyond the Middle Ages: in particular, how it became newly relevant to discussions of language and nationalism in later centuries. Whether looking at primary sources such as letters and official documents, orat creative literature, both religious and secular, the contributions here offer fruitful and exciting approaches to understanding what the French of England can tell us about medieval Britain and the European world beyond. Thelma Fenster is Professor Emerita of French and Medieval Studies, Fordham University; Carolyn Collette is Professor of English Language and Literature at Mount Holyoke College. Contributors: Christopher Baswell,Emma Campbell, Paul Cohen, Carolyn Collette, Thelma Fenster, Robert Hanning, Richard Ingham, Maryanne Kowaleski, Serge Lusignan, Thomas O'Donnell, W. Mark Ormrod, Monika Otter, Felicity Riddy, Delbert Russell, Fiona Somerset, +Robert M. Stein, Andrew Taylor, Nicholas Watson, R.F. Yeager

What did 'home' mean to men and women in the period 1200-1500? This volume explores the many cultural, material and ideological dimensions of the concept of domesticity. Leading scholars examine not only the material cultures of domesticity, gender, and power relations within the household, but also how they were envisioned in texts, images, objects, and architecture. Many of the essays argue that England witnessed the emergence of a distinctive bourgeois ideology of domesticity during the late middle ages. But the volume also contends that, although the world of the great lord was far removed from that of the artisan or peasant, these social groups all occupied physical structures that constituted homes in which people were drawn together by ties of kinship, service or neighbourliness. This pioneering study will appeal to scholars of medieval English society, literature and culture.

This book offers a detailed study of the types of trade that occurred in a medieval English market town. It focuses above all on the identity of buyers and sellers in late fourteenth-century Exeter, a port town that enjoyed particularly good overland connections throughout south-western England. More than most town histories, it explores the dynamic relationship between town and country, and traces how the urban center linked local and regional networks of exchange.

From at least the mid-thirteenth century, the Earl of Cornwall, the wealthiest and most politically powerful lord in the county, employed a special official - called the havener - to supervise the administration of his maritime profits in the county. When the Duchy of Cornwall was created in 1337, the havener's duties were expanded, and he was made a permanent salaried official. The office of havener, for which there was no parallel in medieval Britain, allowed the duchy to manage and exploit its maritime properties and prerogatives in a particularly efficient manner. The accounts of the havener record this management, and survive in summary from the late thirteenth century, but inmore detailed, separate accounts from the early fourteenth century. In focusing on the seventy years from 1287 to 1356, this edition allows readers to trace the impact on Cornwall of such major events as the Hundred Years War (begun in 1337) and the devastating plague of the Black Death in 1348-9. The annual accounts of the havener also offer a wealth of information on the development and prosperity of individual ports, including Plymouth, on fishing andthe fish trade, on piracy and privateering, on shipwrecks and 'royal' fish such as whale and porpoise, and on the overseas trade in wine, tin, hides and other goods. Particularly fascinating are the glimpses we can see of the Spanish, French, Irish and English traders, shipmasters, and fishers who visited Cornish shores, and the insights we gain about the people of medieval Cornwall - merchants, fishers, mariners, wreckers, pirates and even peasants - whomade their living from the sea.

Exeter possesses the best series of local customs accounts from medieval England, beginning in 1266 and surviving for almost 70 per cent of the years up to 1498. They are also far more complete than other local accounts: listing ships' names, home ports, shipmasters and dates of arrival, as well as the importers and their cargoes. Equally remarkable is their focus on coastal as well as overseas traffic, unlike the better known national customs accounts which recorded only overseas trade. From the Exeter accounts we can follow the movements of foreign and domestic shipping, grain imports during the great Famine of 1315-17, and the identity of the merchants, shipmasters and marinerswho carried on the various kinds of trade. Dr Kowaleski's introduction provides the first detailed account of the port of Exeter and its activities during this period, followed by a complete translation of the surviving accounts from 1266 to 1321. The book also includes a specimen Latin account, a glossary of weights and measures, map, and full indexes.

Essays discussing the medieval book, its owners and its readers. Reading, writing, sharing texts, and book ownership in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and how they fostered social and intellectual links and networks between individuals, particularly among women: these are subjects whichthe pioneering work of Mary C. Erler has done so much to illuminate. The essays here, in this volume in her honour, build on her scholarship, engaging with Professor Erler's characteristic use of bibliography in the service of biography by investigating how the physical object of the book can enlighten our understanding of medieval readers and writers. They analyze, for example, what "reading" means in terms of the act itself (and the accessories, such asbookmarks, that helped to set the stage for reading), whether done aloud or silently, in such different venues as an aristocratic court, bourgeois household, village community, and monastic cloister. They also consider the culture of medieval reading practices, especially those of women, across social classes, and in terms of the transition between the pre- and post-Reformation periods; the fluidity of genre boundaries; and changes in devotional reading and writing in this liminal period. A wide variety of genres are covered, including secular romance, devotional texts, schoolbooks, and the illustrated Old Testament preface to the famous Queen Mary Psalter, which recasts the story and image of ancient Israelites to suit elite readerly taste. MARTIN CHASE is Professor of English and Medieval Studies at Fordham University; MARYANNE KOWALESKI is Joseph Fitzpatrick S.J. Distinguished Professor of History and Medieval Studies at Fordham University. CONTRIBUTORS: Allison Alberts, Caroline M. Barron, Heather Blatt, Martin Chase, Joyce Coleman, Sheila Lindenbaum, Joel T. Rosenthal, Michael G. Sargent, Kathryn A. Smith.

Gendering the Master Narrative asks whether a female tradition of power might have existed distinct from the male one, and how such a tradition might have been transmitted. It describes women's progress toward power as a push-pull movement, showing how practices and institutions that ostensibly enabled women in the Middle Ages could sometimes erode their authority as well.This book provides a much-needed theoretical and historical reassessment of medieval women's power. It updates the conclusions from the editors' essential volume on that topic, Women and Power in the Middle Ages, which was published in 1988 and altered the prevailing view of female subservience by correcting the nearly ubiquitous equation of "power" with "public authority." Most scholars now accept a broader definition of power based on the interactions between men and women.In their Introduction, Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski survey the directions in which the study of medieval women's agency has developed in the past fifteen years. Like its predecessor, this volume is richly interdisciplinary. It contains essays by highly regarded scholars of history, literature, and art history, and features seventeen black-and-white illustrations and two maps.

Gendering the Master Narrative asks whether a female tradition of power might have existed distinct from the male one, and how such a tradition might have been transmitted. It describes women's progress toward power as a push-pull movement, showing how practices and institutions that ostensibly enabled women in the Middle Ages could sometimes erode their authority as well.This book provides a much-needed theoretical and historical reassessment of medieval women's power. It updates the conclusions from the editors' essential volume on that topic, Women and Power in the Middle Ages, which was published in 1988 and altered the prevailing view of female subservience by correcting the nearly ubiquitous equation of "power" with "public authority." Most scholars now accept a broader definition of power based on the interactions between men and women.In their Introduction, Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski survey the directions in which the study of medieval women's agency has developed in the past fifteen years. Like its predecessor, this volume is richly interdisciplinary. It contains essays by highly regarded scholars of history, literature, and art history, and features seventeen black-and-white illustrations and two maps.

First full analysis of the rich records surviving from medieval English town courts. Town courts were the principal institution responsible for the delivery of justice and urban administration within medieval towns. Their records survive in large quantities in archives across England, and they provide an unparalleled insight into the lives and work of thousands of men and women who lived in these towns. The court rolls tell us much about the practice of law at the local level within towns, as well as yielding a broad range of perspectiveson the economy, society and administration of towns. This volume is the first collection dedicated to the analysis of town courts and their records. Through a wide range of approaches, it offers new interpretations of the role that these courts played. It also demonstrates the wide range of uses to which court records can be put to in order to more fully understand medieval urban society. The volume draws on the records of a considerable number of towns and their courts across England, including London, York, Norwich, Lincoln, Nottingham, Lynn, Chester, Bromsgrove and Shipston-on-Stour. RICHARD GODDARD is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Nottingham; TERESA PHIPPS is Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of History at Swansea University. Contributors: Christopher Dyer, Richard Goddard, Jeremy Goldberg, Alan Kissane, Maryanne Kowaleski, JaneLaughton, Esther Liberman Cuenca, Susan Maddock, Teresa Phipps, Samantha Sagui

Groundbreaking surveys of the complex interrelationship between the languages of English and French in medieval Britain. With co-editors: CAROLYN COLLETTE, MARYANNE KOWALESKI, LINNE MOONEY, AD PUTTER, and DAVID TROTTER England was more widely and enduringly francophone in the middle ages than many standard accounts of its history, culture and language allow. The development of French in England, whether known as "Anglo-Norman" or "Anglo-French", is deeply interwoven both with medieval English and with the spectrum of Frenches, insular and continental, used withinand outside the realm. As the language of nearly a thousand literary texts, of much administration, and of many professions and occupations, the French of England needs more attention than it has so far received. The essaysin this volume form a new cultural history focussed round, but not confined to, the presence and interactions of French speakers, writers, readers, texts and documents in England from the eleventh to the later fifteenth century.Taking the French of England into account does not simply add new material to our existing narratives of medieval English culture, but changes them, restoring a multi-vocal, multi-cultural medieval England in all its complexity, and opening up fresh agendas for study and exploration. Contributors: HENRY BAINTON, MICHAEL BENNETT, JULIA BOFFEY, RICHARD BRITNELL, CAROLYN COLLETTE, GODFRIED CROENEN, HELEN DEEMING, STEPHANIE DOWNES, MARTHA DRIVER, MONICA H. GREEN, RICHARD INGHAM, REBECCA JUNE, MARYANNE KOWALESKI, PIERRE KUNSTMANN, FRANCOISE H. M. LE SAUX, SERGE LUSIGNAN, TIM WILLIAM MACHAN, JULIA MARVIN, BRIAN MERRILEES, RUTH NISSE, MARILYN OLIVA, W. MARK ORMROD, HEATHER PAGAN, LAURIE POSTLEWATE, JEAN-PASCAL POUZET, AD PUTTER, GEOFF RECTOR, DELBERT RUSSELL, THEA SUMMERFIELD, ANDREW TAYLOR, DAVID TROTTER, ELIZABETH M. TYLER, NICHOLAS WATSON, JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE, ROBERT F. YEAGER

Power in medieval society has traditionally been ascribed to figures of public authority--violent knights and conflicting sovereigns who altered the surface of civic life through the exercise of law and force. The wives and consorts of these powerful men have generally been viewed as decorative attendants, while common women were presumed to have had no power or consequence.

Reassessing the conventional definition of power that has shaped such portrayals, "Women and Power in the Middle Ages" reveals the varied manifestations of female power in the medieval household and community--from the cultural power wielded by the wives of Venetian patriarchs to the economic power of English peasant women and the religious power of female saints. Among the specific topics addresses are Griselda's manipulation of silence as power in Chaucer's "The Clerk's Tale"; the extensive networks of influence devised by Lady Honor Lisle; and the role of medieval women book owners as arbiters of lay piety and ambassadors of culture. In every case, the essays seek to transcend simple polarities of public and private, male and female, in order to provide a more realistic analysis of the workings of power in feudal society.

This book offers a detailed study of the types of trade that occurred in a medieval English market town. It focuses above all on the identity of buyers and sellers in late fourteenth-century Exeter, a port town that enjoyed particularly good overland connections throughout south-western England. More than most town histories, it explores the dynamic relationship between town and country, and traces how the urban center linked local and regional networks of exchange.