Strange Landscape

by Christopher Frayling

Book by Frayling, Christopher

Genres: History, Medieval, Art

224 pages, Paperback

First published May 25, 1995

Reviews

[Lucy Pollard-Gott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Illustrations are well chosen and text is intelligent and detailed, organized around major personalities such as Abelard, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hildegard of Bingen, and Dante. Structure and approach determined by the nature of the TV series episodes, to which this was a companion book. Yet it can be profitably read on its own as a useful thematic commentary on certain cultural milestones of the Middle Ages.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the distant 1990s...1995 to be accurate!...now the dark ages themselves?...this gem of a 'journey through the Middle Ages'...drawing my eyes and my thoughts to new perspectives on what I had long regarded, somewhat lazily as a History graduate, as a kind of 'comic strip' period much parodied by Hollywood films, with knight crusaders, damsels in distress, dragons & witches...& all the religious bigotry of men in red hats & women in nun's habits...& so on for ever & ever Amen!
The truth, such as it can be honestly discovered, was/is far more intriguing, and up for grabs!
In a handful of well-written chapters, erudite Christopher Frayling, discusses the whole, mirage-like concept of the Middle Ages - arguably between the 9th century & the Reformation in the 16th century - with Bernard of Clairvaux in intellectual conflict with Peter Abelard (Heloise gets a nod too!)...Dante's vivid interpretations of his world in 13th c. Florence & Rome...& even using an appendix removed from Umberto Eco's philological intestines to see the whole period as a massive delusional nightmare! Food for thought indeed!
I have quite an appetite for such provocative historical surveys.
To conclude: there is nothing conclusive about the Middle Ages in Europe...as there is nothing conclusive about anything that actually happened before 2024...is there?
You can make up your own version of what you, personally, would like the past to have been like, can't you?...and 'like' it!!!
(My ancestors were wizards!)

[Simon Dobson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating dive into the structure of the Middle Ages, a period often regarded as a uniformly dark cipher. Fraying focuses on four topics: the origins of Gothic architecture; the evolution of the idea of heresy; the conflict between church and reason; and the cosmology of Dante's The Divine Comedy. If these choices seem eclectic, they're both carefully chosen and intricately related to the complete story of the period.

Most fascinating for me was the description of the arguments between Peter Abelard, the man who almost singlehandedly put the University of Paris on the map, and St Bernard of Clairvaux, about the place of reason and inspiration in religion. They were both what we would now regard as religious men, but their radically different views on religion's place and relationship to thought cut the the heart of many modern debates as well. Similarly, the chapter on Dante simplifies and structures what can otherwise be a difficult book to access.

The theme that runs through the book is the similarities that appear between the Middle Ages and the modern world, best captured by Umberto Eco in saying that we have never really left Middle Ages behind. Certainly a book like this makes much more clear the intellectual debt we still owe to the period, as well as how many of the questions raised then remain live even now.

[Apryl Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Introduction to Medieval Sociology 101. I'd like to re-watch the BBC series that this book accompanies. There's a whole lot more going on here than the words imply, as if the best bits of Frayling's studies have been simmered into a jam of interesting fruity nuggets.