The Portable Mediaeval Reader (Viking portable library) Book

In their introduction to this anthology, James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin remind us that no area of the past is dead if we are alive to it. The variety, the complexity, the sheer humanity of the middle ages live most meaningfully in their own authentic voices. The Portable Medieval Reader assembles an entire chorus of those voicesof kings, warriors, prelates, merchants, artisans, chroniclers, and scholarsthat together convey a lively, intimate impression of a world that might otherwise seem immeasurably alien. All the aspects and strata of medieval society are represented: the life of monasteries and colleges, the codes of knigthood, the labor of peasants and the privileges of kings. Includes contemporary accounts of the persecution of Jews and heretics, of the Crusades in the Holy Land, of courtly pageants, popular uprisings, and the first trade missions to Cathay. Chaucer, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Saint Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas and Abelard, alongside lesser-known writers, discourse on the arts, knowledge and speculation of their time. The result, according to the Columbia Record, is a broad and eminently readable cross section of source history and literature...as rich and varied as a stained glass window. Editors: James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin Format: 704 pages, paperback Ages: 18+ Publisher: Penguin Books ISBN: 9780140150469Read More