The Portable Medieval Reader (Portable Library)

Various

ISBN 10: 0140150463 / ISBN 13: 9780140150469

Published by Penguin Publishing Group, 1977

About this Item

Book has minor liquid or water damage on pages Ships same or next business day with delivery confirmation. Acceptable condition. Contains highlighting. Expedited shipping available.

Seller Inventory # 1000011047798-876

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Portable Medieval Reader (Portable Library)
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication Date: 1977
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140150463
• ISBN 13: 9780140150469
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Acceptable

About this title

Synopsis

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 voices—of kings, warriors, prelates, merchants, artisans, chroniclers, and scholars—that 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 here: the life of monasteries and colleges, the codes of knigthood, the labor of peasants and the privileges of kings. There are 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. We find Chaucer, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Saint Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas and Abelard alongside a host of lesser-known writers, discoursing on all the arts, knowledge and speculation of their time. The result, according to the Columbia Record, is a broad and eminetly readable "cross section of source history and literature...as rich and varied as a stained glass window."

About the Author

The Marvel and Other Short Stories is a collected anthology of six short stories written by the winners of the Austin Macauley World Book Day short story competition.