Using Concepts in Medieval History

Peter Crooks

ISBN 10: 3030772799 / ISBN 13: 9783030772796

Published by Springer Nature Switzerland AG, CH, 2022

About this Item

This book is the first of its kind to engage explicitly with the practice of conceptual history as it relates to the study of the Middle Ages, exploring the pay-offs and pitfalls of using concepts in medieval history. Concepts are indispensable to historians as a means of understanding past societies, but those concepts conjured in an effort to bring order to the infinite complexity of the past have a bad habit of taking on a life of their own and inordinately influencing historical interpretation. The most famous example is 'feudalism', whose fate as a concept is reviewed here by E.A.R. Brown nearly fifty years after her seminal article on the topic. The volume's contributors offer a series of case studies of other concepts - 'colony', 'crisis', 'frontier', 'identity', 'magic', 'networks' and 'politics' - that have been influential, particularly among historians of Britain and Ireland in the later Middle Ages. The book explores the creative friction between historical ideas and analytical categories, and the potential for fresh and meaningful understandings to emerge from their dialogue.

Seller Inventory # LU-9783030772796

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Using Concepts in Medieval History
• Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland AG, CH
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3030772799
• ISBN 13: 9783030772796
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition: 1st ed. 2022.
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

This book is the first of its kind to engage explicitly with the practice of conceptual history as it relates to the study of the Middle Ages, exploring the pay-offs and pitfalls of using concepts in medieval history. Concepts are indispensable to historians as a means of understanding past societies, but those concepts conjured in an effort to bring order to the infinite complexity of the past have a bad habit of taking on a life of their own and inordinately influencing historical interpretation. The most famous example is ‘feudalism’, whose fate as a concept is reviewed here by E.A.R. Brown nearly fifty years after her seminal article on the topic. The volume’s contributors offer a series of case studies of other concepts – 'colony', 'crisis', 'frontier', 'identity', 'magic', 'networks' and 'politics' – that have been influential, particularly among historians of Britain and Ireland in the later Middle Ages. The book explores the creative friction between historical ideas and analytical categories, and the potential for fresh and meaningful understandings to emerge from their dialogue.

About the Author

Jackson W. Armstrong is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Aberdeen, UK. 

Peter Crooks is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, Ireland.

Andrea Ruddick is a History teacher at St Paul’s School, London, UK. She previously worked as a lecturer and research fellow at the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford.