The Serf, the Knight, and the Historian
368The Serf, the Knight, and the Historian
368Hardcover
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Overview
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780801436802 |
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Publisher: | Cornell University Press |
Publication date: | 02/15/2009 |
Pages: | 368 |
Product dimensions: | 6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d) |
Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
What People are Saying About This
The Serf, the Knight, and the Historian is an outstanding translation of Dominique Barthélemy's brilliantly argued attack on the scholarly consensus of the last half century that a so-called 'feudal revolution' or 'feudal mutation' radically transformed France and other regions of Europe in around 1000. Two new essays written for this volume show how he and other critics of 'mutationnisme' in Europe and the U.S. demolished this paradigm and established a new one. Barthélemy fought 'the feudal revolution'—and won.
Dominique Barthélemy is in my book the most interesting historian of the middle ages writing today in France, or possibly anywhere else. He combines the best of the French intellectual tradition with a deep understanding of what Anglophone anthropology and legal studies have to offer. His persuasive pen draws readers to approve the unexpected beauties his imagination and broad learning constantly elicits from his texts.The fertility of his mind seems unceasing. In this book, he transcends controversy over the supposed 'Mutation'of the year 1000, to convincingly reshape a gradual European social change over the medieval centuries around the ever-changing notions of serf and knight. This English version is more than translation of the 1997 French edition; with subtle rethinking and added chapters, it constitutes a significantly improved edition. This is a book to enjoy, but also to engage with. It will stand alongside Marc Bloch's Feudal Society and the oeuvre of Georges Duby, both as an exemplary demonstration of historical imagination and the evocation of medieval society for the twenty-first century.