The Medieval Reader: First-hand Accounts of the Middle Ages Including Letters, Essays, State and Church Documents, Poetry and Ballads by Norman F. Cantor.
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DESCRIPTION: Softcover: 368 pages. Publisher: Harpercollins (1994).The only book of its kind, "The Medieval Reader" is a fascinating, illustrated collection of almost 100 first-hand accounts of the period known as the Middle Ages, roughly from the fourth to the sixteenth centuries. Revealing the Medieval World in all its astonishing diversity, the selections reflect the culture of the people who lived during the period, and the contributions they made to their world and our own.
Including, in the best translations, are familiar texts such as "The Song of Roland", St. Augustine's "Confessions", and Dante's "Divine Comedy". The book also contains the work of many less familiar writers, including prominent medieval women such as Hildegard of Bingen, Christine de Pisan and Margery Kempe. Finally, with the inclusion of many selections illustrating medieval social history, such as "The Peasants Revolt of 1381" from the Anonimalle Chronicle, "The Medieval Reader" brings the Middle Ages to life in a way that no narrative history could.
CONDITION: New oversized softcover. Unblemished except VERY slight edge and corner shelf wear to the covers. Pages are pristine; clean, crisp, unmarked, unmutilated, tightly bound, unambiguously unread. Condition is entirely consistent with new stock from a bookstore environment wherein new books might show minor signs of shelfwear, consequence of simply being shelved and re-shelved. Satisfaction unconditionally guaranteed. In stock, ready to ship. No disappointments, no excuses.
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PLEASE SEE PUBLISHER, PROFESSIONAL, AND READER REVIEWS BELOW.
REVIEW: This book presents nearly 100 documents from the Middle Ages, along with notes and commentary by the author, a noted authority on the period. These first-hand accounts from the Medieval era feature many voices, from the nobility and peasantry, and Christians and Jews alike, highlighting the interplay between them. Includes 63 black-and-white photographs.
Norman F. Cantor was Emeritus Professor of History, Sociology, and Comparative Literature at New York University. His academic honors include appointments as a Rhodes Scholar, Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellow at Princeton University, and Fulbright Professor at Tel Aviv University. His many books include the New York Times bestseller "In the Wake of the Plague", "Antiquity", "Inventing the Middle Ages", which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and "The Civilization of the Middle Ages", the most widely read narrative of the Middle Ages in the English language.
REVIEW: One of today's best known medievalists offers an anthology of letters, essays, state and church documents, poetry, ballads, and other first-hand accounts of life in the European Middle Ages, many of them excerpts from longer works. The selections were made for readability as well as intrinsic importance to provide an entry to Medieval society for general readers, armchair history buffs, and undergraduate students. No subject index. A comfortable, durable volume.
REVIEW: Norman Cantor's book is a fascinating collection of a very diverse and pivotal period in history. The Middle Ages, for Cantor, extend from the year 312 A.D. (the advent of the first Christian Roman Emperor, signaling in many respects the end of the Classical Age) to the year 1517 A.D., the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation, another key paradigm shift in the world. This reader is largely constructed of pieces contemporary to the Middle Ages. There is some commentary provided, but the bulk of the task of presenting the Middle Ages rests upon the texts themselves, most translated anew into English by Cantor and other scholars.
This is also a Western Civilization reader. The Middle Ages is of a time as a well as of a place. The geography is Western Europe, from Ireland to Germany, from Scotland and Scandanavia to Italy and Spain. This was the land of Latin Catholicism, pollinated occasionally by Islamic culture from the south and Byzantine Christianity from the east, but largely undisturbed in its development. This culture represents a system of ideas political, religious and otherwise that formed much of the basis for modern Western culture, whose dominance in the world today is, for better or worse, unmistakable.
Cantor's anthology of 100 key texts is meant to simplify the task of determining what is worthwhile reading from this period. Primary texts from the Middle Ages, so defined as comprising more than a thousand years, would include literally thousands of volumes. The output of writers such as Augustine alone could take a lifetime to read. Cantor arranges key texts topically, according to certain classifications. Nobility (including the primary families of the period, a sort of Social Register of royal and landed persons who controlled most of what would be considered state power). Church (the hierarchy and the overall institution), and the Middle Class (yes, there was a Middle Class, both urban and rural, that included knights, gentry, artisans and the like).
Taking these classifications, Cantor arranges first texts that show them in as isolated a form as possible, then looks at the ways they interact with each other. The final portions of the text include works that look at problems and crises, and ends with documents of resolution, pacification and incorporation. This is no mere chronology of texts. The emphasis here is on developing the patterns of society over time in the different strata. Literary works utilized include Beowulf, the Song of Roland, El Cid, the works of Dante, Chaucer, and Malory. Church writers from Augustine, Anselm, Bernard and Aquinas are combined with political writings from those such as Petrarch, Erasmus, and various anonymous documents and letters.
There are some real stunning pieces here - Bernard Gui's Inquisitor's Manual, Maimonides' reflections on Christianity (and one of his radical followers trying to explain why Jewish sex is preferable to Christian sex - something that must be read to be believed!), an account of the murder of Thomas Becket, and more. Take and read! You'll not regret it, and your life will be enriched.
REVIEW: When I first purchased this book through a mail order book club I was very dubious about ever reading it. It looked very uninteresting. But like the saying goes you can't judge a book by it's cover! And it's true this book has introduced me to so many other medieval authors that it's impossible to count them all. If it had not been for Norman Cantor I would have lost out on a lot of good Medieval reading! Thanks Mr. Cantor.
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