Medieval Towns: A Reader

Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures #11

by Maryanne Kowaleski (Editor)

This exciting new collection of documents from across Europe gives a fresh perspective and sharp taste of everyday life in a medieval town. The sources range from the standard chronicles and charters to the less often viewed accounts of marriage disputes, urban women, families, the environment, the dangers of town life, and civic ritual. Deliberately wide-ranging, these sources acknowledge the contributions of other disciplines--such as archaeology, architecture, demography, law, and environmental studies--to our understanding of urban life in the Middle Ages. Towns from Spain to Germany to Russia are covered, while the focus is on the more urbanized regions of medieval Europe, particularly Italy, the Low Countries, France, and England. In all, 150 primary sources are included, 35 of which are translated for this volume from Latin, Old French, Anglo-Norman, Franco-Venetian, medieval Danish, and other languages.

Academics please note that this is a title classified as having a restricted allocation of complimentary copies. Restricted titles remain available to adopters and to academics very likely to adopt in the coming semester. When adoption possibilities are less strong and/or further in the future, academics are requested to purchase the title, with the proviso that UTP Higher Education will happily refund the purchase price if the book is indeed adopted.

Genres: History, Medieval History, Medieval

424 pages, Paperback

First published May 19, 2006

About the author

Professor Maryanne Kowaleski is Joseph Fitzpatrick S.J. Distinguished Professor of Social Science and History at Fordham University in New York. She is presently (2012) the director for the Center for Medieval Studies at Fordham.

Reviews

[Brian Wilkerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Medieval Towns - a reader" is a book from one of my college classes. It is only recently that I've had time to fully read it.

This is a book of primary sources related to urban communities in Europe from the Late Roman Period to the Late Medieval Period. It covers mostly Western Europe: British Isles, Iberian peninsula, Italy and Sicily, and the eastern parts of Germania.

It covers a broad range of subjects: economy, religion, marriage and families, social conflict, entertainment (which is mixed with "civic ritual"). The documents available to them vary from court documents and chronicles to private diaries, and from personal letters to royal proclamations. Each one is sandwiched by a paragraph giving background information on it, which I assume to be written by the editor, and a group of questions about it. I presume these are meant to be discussion questions because the answers to many of them are not contained within the documents themselves.

I found them interesting. As a novelist, I expect to make frequent use of this book whenever my story takes place in a medieval European setting.

Something like this is too outside my standard grading system to give an official Trickster Eric Novels grade, so I'll just given it a "Pass +".