A History of Private Life, Volume II, Revelations of the Medieval World - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674399765 ISBN 13: 9780674399761

Publisher: Belknap Press, 1988

Synopsis

All the mystery, earthiness and romance of the Middle Ages are captured in this panorama of everyday life. The evolving concepts of intimacy are explored--from the semi-obscure eleventh century through the first stirrings of the Renaissance world in the fifteenth century. Color and black-and-white illustrations.

About this title

About the Author

Georges Duby, a member of the Académie Française, is Professor of Medieval History at the Collège de France.

Reviews

People of the Middle Ages were suspicious of solitude. Feudal dwellings were promiscuously crowded, monastery layouts reflected a fear of isolation. Yet, the idea of privacy, linked to an inner life, stubbornly took root. Intimacy found expression in peasant hearths, in orchards where lovers embraced, in noble households with their areas for retreat, in towers and fortresses that gave ordinary people a refuge from the havoc of war. The private sphere spilled out into the neighborhood. Moving from the anonymous 11th century to the stirrings of Renaissance individualism, this second volume of essays in a projected five-volume opus is a marvelous re-creation of history as it was actually lived, an archeological excavation of daily life few historians have attempted. Hundreds of apt illustrations complement discussions of bedroom design, table manners, discovery of the body, customs. The growing importance of the individual is traced through fables, romances, poems and a new realism in painting. The contributors are French scholars; Duby is a professor at the College de France. History Book Club alternate.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

These volumes, edited by Philippe Aries and Georges Duby, are aimed at both the scholar and layperson who wonder how people lived and behaved from ancient times to the present: "their thoughts, their feelings, their bodies, their attitudes, their habits and habitations, their codes, their marks, and their signs." The focus is on western European life, primarily French.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674399765
• ISBN 13: 9780674399761
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 688