Medieval Households

Medieval Households
David Herlihy | 1985-01-01 00:00:00 | Harvard | 227 | History
Medieval Households (Studies in Cultural History)
By David Herlihy


* Publisher: Harvard University Press
* Number Of Pages: 227
* Publication Date: 1985-10
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 067456376X
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780674563766



Product Description:

Traces the history of family life during the Middle Ages and examines medieval marriages, childhood, motherhood, and fatherhood.
Review
[An] immensely stimulating book...Herlihy has a rare talent for incorporating lively narrative evidence into the context suggested by quantifiable data and writing about it with grace and verve.
--David Nicholas (American Historical Review )

Herlihy's excellent work makes accessible persuasive counterarguments against the theory that affection for children developed only recently. Herlihy...demonstrates how modern society moved toward its definition of 'family' and shows its emergence in the medieval period. He uses scattered and diverse source material to trace the development of the family from Roman times to the medieval development of common expectations of family life applicable to all classes. The sources, ranging from well-known classical and medieval writers such as Aristotle, Tacitus, Aquinas, and Augustine to monastic archives, sermons, lives of saints, and civil archives, provide models and reflections of family life, including the church's use of scripture to establish marital and family standards applicable to ruler and serf alike...This book will become the standard source for family history in cultural context. In spite of its erudition, it is accessible to undergraduates...[A] fascinating, readable, and scholarly work. (Choice )

Here is a happy marriage: a preeminent historian tackling the thorniest of problems, household and family in medieval Europe. The result is altogether felicitous, a rich, detailed, well-written, and fascinating book of extraordinary range, one designed for students and general readers that will also be invaluable to specialists.
--Robert S. Gottfried (Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies )


Summary: Excellent overview, but a bit narrow
Rating: 4

Herlihy has done a masterful job of detaling the daily life of most Europeans during the middle ages, exploring gender roles and the various "chores" a household had to tend to as the seasons changed. It provides an outstanding overview of the complex and labor intensive work of survival during this period of time. However, I found it a bit narrow in terms of the time period it covered. The "middle ages" last over 1000 years - from around 500 AD (the "early middle ages") to the "late middle ages" (ending around 1450). In the course of such a long period of time, even in the middle ages, tasks, roles and habits change. This is not fully addressed, as the majority of the book discusses households in the "high" (800 - 1200) middle ages. Nonetheless, an excellent introduction to the subject.
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