Overview

This book compares the cultures of the different social groups living in the Low Countries in the early Middle Ages. Clergy, nobility, peasants and townsmen greatly varied in their attitudes to labor, property, violence, and the handling and showing of emotions. Künzel explores how these social groups looked at themselves as a group, and how they looked at the other groups. Image and self-image could differ radically. The results of this research are specified and tested in four case studies on the interaction between group cultures, focusing respectively on the influence of oral and written traditions on a literary work, rituals as a means of conflict management in weakly centralized societies, stories as an expression of an urban group mentality, and beliefs on death and the afterlife.

Full Product Details

9781472442109

Table of Contents

Reviews

'... this book indeed represents a thought-provoking and insightful collection of studies ... it succeeds both in opening up the rich array of medieval sources from the Low Countries and in making accessible the relevant literature based on these sources to international readers. The translation is an excellent piece of work: it follows the Dutch closely but the English is elegant' - Arnoud-Jan Bijsterveld, Belgisch tijdschrift voor filologie en geschiedenis / Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire

Author Information

Rudi Künzel previously taught in the Department of History at the University of Amsterdam.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available