The Text and the World: The Henrykow Book, Its Authors, and Their Region, 1160-1310 - Hardcover

Gorecki, Piotr

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199688796 ISBN 13: 9780199688791

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2015

Synopsis

The Text and the World is a study of an exceptionally interesting primary source - the Henrykow Book - and of the local and regional world which that source reflected and helped shape. The source is a history of the Cistercian monastery in Henrykow, about forty kilometers to the south of Wroclaw, in the duchy of Silesia, produced in the monastery in two sections-one completed soon after 1268, the other soon after 1310-and redacted into a single codex in the second or third decade of the fourteenth century. The earlier part of the Book is the work of Peter, the third abbot of the monastery, while the continuation was written by an anonymous monk at the same community, possibly a later abbot by the same name.

The Henrykow Book offers an exceptionally rich introduction to a number of subjects currently of major interest to medieval historians. It is interesting as a literary work, as an instance of forensic rhetoric, and as a type of legal argument; as an instance of biography and (implicit) autobiography. It draws on and is an example of the relationship between memory and writing, and acts as a record of lordship, power, economy, the law, social groups, communities, and institutions, in the local and regional world of the time. The Text and the World explores each of these major subjects, contextualized with the Henrykow Book's contemporary diplomatic evidence.

About this title

About the Author

Piotr Gorecki is a professor of history at the University of California, Riverside, where he has worked since 1989, after lecturing briefly at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His training is in general medieval history, and in his research he specializes in the history of medieval Poland, with a principal focus on the intersection between social and legal history, on medieval communities, and on the medieval economy. He has a PhD from the University of Chicago (history, 1988), and a JD from Stanford Law School (1983).

Review

a passionate journey, meticulously designed ... By refusing to take an authoritative stance as the interpreter of the Henrykow Book, to which he was certainly entitled, Piotr Gorecki invites his readers to a mesmerizing journey and compels them to embark on an uneasy quest. * Marian Coman, The Medieval Review * draws together over thirty years of studies ... providing an exemplary close reading of his source as a textual artefact. * Medium Aevum * a penetrating and fulsome analysis ... should be of the greatest significance to students of Polish history, of Cistercian life, and of historical geography. * David H. Williams, Citeaux: Commentarii Cistercienses * There is much that can be learned from this book. In the first instance, it is a lesson in how to do micro-history or local history; any postgraduate looking to write a dissertation on local social or economic history, or a history of a single landowners estates, or a history of an individual monastery, ought to include this book as a part of an essential library of methodological approaches to such an undertaking ... Gorecki succeeds magnificently in providing us with a history of a European monastic institution that can serve as an example of European history within a larger, overarching framework that encompasses many regions of Europe east and west; and while I must reiterate my hope that he will also provide us with more on that overarching framework, this book is in itself already an outstanding achievement. * Shami Ghosh, Reviews in History *

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0199688796
• ISBN 13: 9780199688791
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 320