Set Handbook of Medieval Culture

This new handbook on the culture of the European Middle Ages (c. 500-1500) is designed to create an overview, both broad and detailed, coming from the fuller picture that research has provided in recent years. The editor has focused on providing a solid platform of integrated knowledge in hopes of supporting future research. The three volumes are not divided alphabetically or by theme; this should be considered one huge book cut in thirds. Contributors offer chapters: traditional overviews suitable for introductory classes (courts and aristocracy; daily life; visual art; war and peace), focused topics (horses and equitation; dreams and dream theory; universities; ships and seafaring; numismatics), and ways of thinking about how people saw their world (the senses and sensing; friendship; fashion; memory, recollection, and forgetting; excrement and waste; roads, streets, bridges, and travelers; fairy, elves, and the enchanted otherworld). The editor usefully allows these approaches to overlap: one contributor looks at death, another at illness and death, another at medicine. One looks at animals, another at hunting, hawking, and fishing. One discusses poverty and another peasants and rural life, one deals with conquest and coexistence in Spain and another with Al-Andalus and the three cultures, one looks at literature and another at Jewish culture and literature in England. Approaches to religion include God; the Bible and Biblical exegesis; church and the clergy; hell, purgatory, and heaven; the Greek Orthodox Church; saints and relics, Western monasticism; witchcraft and superstition; sermons. The general trend is to integrate diverse discussion rather than having special minority sections and deleting these groups from the rest of the text. Some contributors do this more successfully for women than others. The choice of detailed topics is designed to stimulate interest more than go over well-worn ground; there are chapters on food and cookbooks and on dwarves, ogres, trolls, and giants, for instance, but none on King Arthur. A few contributors provide black and white images; all offer short bibliographies for further reading. This large book will be suitable for a variety of students, academics, and general readers who can afford it. Strongly recommended for general and historical/cultural libraries. Annotation c2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Albrecht Classen, The University of Arizona, Tucson, U.S.A.