Medieval violence : physical brutality in Northern France, 1270-1330 / Hannah Skoda.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Skoda, Hannah, 1981-

Series:

Oxford historical monographs

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Violence--France, Northern--History--To 1500.

Violence.

History.

France--Social life and customs--To 1328.

France.

Manners and customs.

Northern France.

Physical Description:

xiii, 282 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2013.

Summary:

Medieval Violence provides a detailed analysis of the practice of medieval brutality, focusing on a thriving region of northern France in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. It examines how violence was conceptualised in this period, and uses this framework to investigate street violence, tavern brawls, urban rebel lions, student misbehaviour, and domestic violence. The interactions between these various forms of violence are examined in order to demonstrate the complex and communicative nature of medieval brutality. What is often dismissed as dysfunctional behaviour is shown to have been highly strategic and socially integral. Violence was a performance, dependent upon the spaces in which it took place. Indeed, brutality was contingent upon social and cultural structures. At the same time, the common stereotype of the thoughtlessly brutal Middle Ages is challenged, as attitudes towards violence are revealed to have been complex, troubled, and ambivalent. Whether violence could function effectively as a form of communication which could order and harmonise society, or whether it inevitably degenerated into chaotic disorder where meanings were multiple and unstable, remained a matter of ongoing debate in various contexts. Using a variety of source material, including legal records, popular literature, and sermons, Hannah Skoda explores experiences of, and attitudes towards, violence, and highlights profound contemporary ambiguity concerning its nature and legitimacy. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction

Grammars of violence

Violence on the street in Paris and Artois

'Oés comme il fierent grans caus!': tavern violence in thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Paris and Artois

Student violence in thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Paris

Urban uprisings

Domestic violence in Paris and Artois

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [245]-275) and index.

ISBN:

9780199670833

0199670838

OCLC:

835959117